Slashdot Mirror
Japan IDs All Its Citizens
Edis Krad writes "While RealID in the US is a threat whose implementation is a ways in the future, the Japanese long ago implemented something similar; and there has been very little complaint raised about it. The Juki Net (Residents Registration Network — link in Japanese) has been silently developing since 1992. The system involves an 11-digit unique number to identify every citizen in Japan, and the data stored against that ID covers name, address, date of birth, and gender. Many Japanese citizens seem to be oblivious that such a government-run network exists. Juki Net had a spotlight shone on it recently because a number of citizens around the country sued against it, citing concerns of information misuse or leakage. And while an Osaka court ruled against the system, the Japanese Supreme Court has just ruled it is not unconstitutional, on the grounds that the data will be used in a bona-fide manner and there's no risk of leakage. While there is a longstanding registration system for us foreigners in Japan, what astonishes me is how the government can secretly implement such a system for its citizens, and how little concern the media and Japanese citizens in general display about the privacy implications."
I live in continental Europe and I have an ID card. I know that exactly the same style of ID cards exists in at least Belgium and Germany. Why is it a problem? You get to use it only when to prove that you're actually you. Like when voting and when I did an exam to try to become a state servant (I failed, if you really want to know.)
I also have a number that uniquely identifies me. It is the equivalent the social security number and it consists of my birthdate in format yyyymmdd followed by a three digit number. Unlike in the US, knowing this number means nothing. It's not secret... It isn't displayed on my ID card though.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
*Spit* Nyeeehh, all them dayum numbers look the same to me anyways.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Get real. You have to register yourself at your local city office, so the authorities already know all about you. You also have to have a medical insurance ID. You also need to be registered at the tax office.
Privacy concerns in this day and age are ridiculous. You haven't any.
Fighting the tide only works when you're on the shore. When you're at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, there isn't very much you can do.
It most likely passed through with so few complaints because of how different the culture is there from here. Something like this might seem like the ridiculously obvious thing to do for them. You can't count on very body to think the same as Americans, for better and worse.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
The Japanese don't have such an irrational fear of databases and information. In part because of their culture (which is not so contaminated with outside influences such as cultures that most slashdot readers might be familiar with) and also in part because they are not subject to the US constitution (gasp, shock). Here's an idea: perhaps the Japanese are able to determine which laws they want? I know, a radical idea - they didn't even consult the UN before implementing this.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
we already have this here in the states with a certain nine-digit every gets at birth.
stupid japanese have to go off a create a eleven-digit number just to show us up.
Gone!
Well I don't know about the rest of you, but personally i'd prefer my gender NOT be leaked to everyone who wants to spend countless hours hacking this network.
In reading this story, I wonder about how individuals raised in cultures different than my own (read: USA) view issues of personal privacy vs. common good. Broadly speaking, we in the states tend to defend a "rights" theory; that our personal rights can, in some cases, trump the good of society. However, the idea of a populace giving in some personal rights for those of the supposed good lies on the spectrum of utilitarianism; that by putting in place a universal ID, it's necessary to give up some personal rights, in order to protect the largest number of people.
But, I'd be interested to know about how others compare this issue to the various historical theories of ethics...
Now that's a bit unrealistic, wouldn't you say? No matter how much security and other preventative measures you put up, isn't in unrealistic to say that there is zero chance of a break in?
To me, the biggest scare of a national ID is the idea that we're putting all personal info in one database- a fat, juicy target. Other than the Papers please mentality, that is...
Who cares what anyone else does? That doesn't make it right.
"Because everyone else is doing it" doesn't count.
You're astonished that a completely different culture has different standards for privacy? The modern American conception of privacy is hardly universal, and it wasn't too long ago that things like your shopping habits couldn't be private because the people who sold to you all knew you personally.
Visit the
I have often wondered what life would be like if we didn't have the phrases "Orwellian" or "mark of the beast" in our vocabulary? Is our life (in America) better, more free because of our mindset from reading Orwell? Or is it worse because our paranoia about becoming "orwellian" hampers real progress in using technology to improve our lives? Thus also "mark of the beast?" If it were not for the stigma (pun intended) of being subjugated to a totalitarian government/economic system, how much better could commerce and governance be with a "master table" of PIDs?
Go for it: List the pros or cons of each scenario... But just remember, all those pros go away when the people controlling the database go bad. And they do.
I never bought into the idea that of different cultural standards for different cultures. I'm a secular leftist. I say privacy issues effect all Terrans and culture is irrelevant. Now. Keep in mind, I am a fan of the Japanese. Yes this is a privacy issue. Yes, the Japanese people should resist it. Culture is absolutely irrelevant on issues like this. Using culture is an excuse for bad behavior.
All Terrans of all the world should have standards of privacy, due process, autonomy, those sorts of things. I'm not advocating the US way is the best way, because really, I'm ashamed of what the US is slowly becoming. I'm simply stating these are the rights all people should have.
I have better: as a geek, I assigned myself this UUID: e455ce96-4457-4612-bb1e-bea339028446
why is there a kneejerk attitude towards a national in the usa?. a national id seems rather prudent, a cost and effort saving initiative. most every other modern western democracy has one. it's just a good, modest idea. really
and yet you encounter this sort of hysteria like it iss satan himself doling out the mark of the beast and we will all be under the boot of fascism if we have a national id. it really doesn't make any sense. we already have drivers licenses
the issue is not that a national id is some major encroachment on privacy rights. the issue is just the idea of a national id has become a lightning rod for immediate kneejerk rejection, regardless of any sane rational thought on the issue
for those who go into rabid frothing at the mouth over a national id, just calm the f*** down, really. it isn't a big deal
OH MY GOD I'M A JACKBOOTED THUG. PAPERS PLEASE
pfffffft. irrational hysteria
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is that all? You give those out any time you buy alcohol.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
As for us in Costa Rica (not Puerto Rico), in Central America (in the middle of the whole continent), an ID system called "cédula de identidad" has been used since some decades ago for all citizens (a Costa Rican is a citizen once he/she is 18 years old). A 9-digits number is related with full name, gender, date and place of birth. Recent "cedulas" even include a version of one's signature (recollected by a writing tablet). It is an necessary ID for every kind of (bureaucratic) transactions (voting at the national and local elections, signing in for a bank account, obtaining a driver licence, etc.). Most of us are not concerned about the privacy issue (specially because the Government itself isn't Orwellian at all).
"Nature is indifferent to our values, and can only be understood by ignoring our notions of good and bad." (B. Russell)
Seriously people, it's the 21st century, the information age. Privacy does not exist. You WILL give your information to banks, governments, health care agencies, employers, etc. in order to function in this world. They in turn will eventually fsck up and disclose said information publicly. I'm in favor of regulations that provide recourse and stiff penalties for organizations that mishandle information. However, they won't always be enforcible and lobbyists will put in loop holes making them ineffective, that's just reality. In the information age, your identity is your face. You don't walk down the street wearing a mask, do you? No, you'd look pretty silly. Do you yell at the shop clerk to not look at your face? No, you'd be considered rude. Just shut up and get used to it. Your identity is already public. Your personal information is likely to end up public. The best thing you can do is keep up to date on your credit profile and not be an idiot about spreading your information any more than you must.
DONT PANIC
In America, at least, we've had government records for a very long time on our citizens. You have to. Even court records have to be kept on people who've been brough to trial, convicted, sued, etc. Why wouldn't you want a unique ID number for each citizen and legal immigrant? Think of how much easier it'd be to tell TSA to piss off if the social security number had been turned into the Federal Identification Number. They tell you you're a terrorist, you tell them to check the FIN on the list, and lo and behold, wrong person, and they look like an idiot.
What is really upsetting isn't the ID number, but how much and what data the governments of the first world countries store on people.
... the evil is in the linking of databases. In most european countries I know of, public databases are declared to an authority and must be used within a given scope. Linking is prohibited as a general rule. So you can have an ID, and be kind of privacy safe because your ID is supposed to only prove you are yourself. From what I read, in the US, as soon as someone collects data, public or private, it ends in databases that can be linked to others with very little oversight. This can lead in effect to massive privacy leaks. To top it, there's no limit to which data can be gathered (gender, race, religion, you name it). In europe, you're not allowed to gather much besides name, DOB, and address.
If I was a US citizen, I think I'd be a little worried too.
If you want to sign up to your own ID card system, fine, I have no problem with that whatsoever.
The problem is, if I don't want to sign up with your system, you get to put me in jail.
This is downright wrong and against the basic right that all human beings have to stay silent about their personal information.
Not to mention, any time in human history where ID schemes and mandatory databases have been misused they used exactly the same "what could go wrong/what have you got to hide" reasoning as they are using now.
Godwin's law be damned, how do you think the Nazi government knew where all the jews lived when they started handing out arm bands and shipping them to concentration camps?
The point isn't what today's government in today's climate will do with it. The point is that no organization should be given that much unchecked power to mandate citizens to give up their private information when it has never been proven that a government is immune to corruption and incompetence.
Governments have proven themselves untrustworthy with this level of information on the general public.
The UK government lost 28 million peoples private information LAST YEAR alone.
But the government has proven itself competent and reliable in every other aspect of its business so I guess we should trust it on this one.....
yeesh
Sources :
http://www.betanews.com/article/UK_government_loses_data_on_as_many_as_25_million_people/1195687877
http://www.news.com/U.K.-government-loses-data-on-driving-test-candidates/2100-1029_3-6223292.html
http://www.news.com/U.K.-government-loses-pensioner-data/2100-1029_3-6223493.html
of someone coming around and issuing a number that can identify each and every individual in the country? I'm sorry, but last time I checked we already had a national database of (nearly) all of our (mostly) legal residents. Seems like nobody is scared of a social security number given to your children at birth, but we've been using them since what, the 30s? I think we are used to the idea of non-privacy now.
Granted, you can't really take a SSN and determine sex and current address from that number alone, but you can check state of birth, and have a reasonable idea of when they were born. Given the right knowledge and "1337 skillz" one can also phone up their local office and request the information on a given number at any given time. Now then... don't you feel even more secure about your special super secret only to me(and everyone I want to do business with) ID number?
Also, just to step on both sides of the fence for a minute, you are not required to get a social security number in the US. Your parents did you the favor, so they can claim you on their taxes. Granted, without a SSN, you'll be hard pressed to get a job that doesn't involve picking fruit or disposing of bodies. Good luck getting a bank to look at you for very long either. Even though there is no law requiring you to show proof of a SSN, without one you might as well kiss anything that requires money goodbye.
My 9 digit national ID number links to only my name, birthdate, gender and address. And my healthcare provider, and my entire credit history.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
So who defines what those rights are? You?
If you believe that rights are absolute, you must present who defines what they are- that leads into a subjective bias imposed by the person doing the definition.
If you believe that rights are subjective but defined by the entire population group, that theory propagates down to any small population group that is self-lead- like say, a state government.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
that's the number on my registration card. it was issued when i registered and had my fingerprints taken in the public security office here in sao paulo.
and you know what ? IS NOT A BIG DEAL.
get over it, USians. the govt already know who you are. how many databases you're registered on ? DMV, social security, schools permanent records, with the military, and so on.
if the govt is not abusing all that info, then a national ID will be just a formality without adding any risk.
now, if they ARE using all the info they already have against the population, a new database won't make any difference. and you people should seriously start considering a revolution.
What ? Me, worry ?
My first thought was 'how could a country intelligently design all of its citizens'
:(
Japanese media is under tight control of the government anyhow. If they publish stories the government does not like, they risk loosing their license when it has to be renewed next time. So unless there is something happening that is against the law in the first place, they cannot complain about it. If you live in Japan, you should read some international news about Japan in int. newspapers and then compare it to the reporting about the same issue in Japanese newspapers. You will see the difference. Censorship in Japan is normal & much stricter than one would expect from a country like that.
no sig
Its one of those things kinda like the definition of Porn; I know it when I see it. I'm not that brilliant an orator. And no, I don't think I'm qualified to know what those rights are. I will leave that for greater minds. But we all seem to know Human rights violations when we see them.
Americans don't understand being held accountable for their actions hence they're going to fight being identifiable until they've been properly schooled in accountability. Welcome to school children. This is going to be painful.
Where's the guy that's always posting stuff about "goodnight, Liberty" and "ah, my children" and "get out while you can?"
Oh, that's right - this is Japan we're talking about.
Dark Reflection
I think I would be more understanding of the motivation for the US to roll out a national ID card, if only it weren't under the pretense that it was for our own protection. Right now, if I didn't want to get a drivers license, then I just don't drive and the government could care less. However, if I resist getting a national ID card, I'm going to look like I have something to hide. The fact that the REAL ID had to be slipped into a bill regarding Tsunami relief just makes the real intention for it seem that much more ominous. I think that it's ultimately going to result in the US becoming a much less free country.
I'm something as odd as a hardcore libertarian Swede. I moved to Silicon Valley in 1995, in small part because of that.
Like most other developed nations, Sweden has a system much like Japan's, that keeps track of who people are where they live. This results in vastly superior service to the citizens. You don't have to register to vote, you can get a passport in under an hour, and in general you only have to tell one governmental agency something once, and the others will also get the information on a need-to-know basis.
And here is my point:
The US government already knows everything about you. They even read your email and tap your phone at will. But since they have to pretend not to, we have to keep sending in the same information again and again, things take forever and are often done wrong. We have the worst of both worlds, with little privacy and little functioning services.
Americans fight this kind of system thinking they're protecting privacy. They're not. Their privacy is long gone, and they're just wasting their effort. If you have the energy to fight for freedom, use it where it counts. This, unfortunately, is not such a place.
"...the government can secretly implement such a system..."
anyone else remember that?
This is a 10-digit code with 1 check digit. In the all-to-near future (after the singularity) since nobody will live on Earth within patches of land called countries, your nationality is arbitrary. BUT obviously, since everyone will choose Japanese by default, they'll run out of unique ID space at only ten billion people! This will result in a universal catastrophic genocide as everyone gets bumped off the bottom of the ID space to make room for the millions and millions of newcomers spawned in the singular cyberspace!
Perhaps the Japanese have a little more faith in their government. Of course, the fact that a bureaucrat caught selling data, cheating or making a mess of things is likely to commit suicide in some spectacularly messy fashion might have something to do with this.
When government officials in the US are caught lying, cheating and stealing, they simply resign and start officially working for Halliburton.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The difference is that the Japanese government actually cares about and cares for its citizens - all of them. The proof is everywhere: national health insurance; immediate and effective disaster response; a public transportation system second-to-none; national renewable initiatives. Sure, there are fowl ups and there are crooks, but compared to the criminal maladministration in the US, I'd take Japanese government any day, and I'd gladly sign up and participate in a national ID. The difference is trust.
DUDE! I'M A FAN! I LOVE YOUR ART!!
A) Prudent and Good for a government to track every citizen individually.
B) Prudent and Good to be rude and abusive in the manner in which they express their support of such a system.
(Does anybody else note the disturbing irony in this?)
In any case, I have two things to say in response. . .
1) Such a system would indeed be Prudent and Good if governments could be trusted.
2) NO government can be trusted.
That is all.
-FL
We do? I have one word for you: waterboarding.
Just to clarify, you brought up porn. I don't think a nipple is porn, but the US broadcasters thinks so. For religious muslims a girl in bikini is porn. I recognize porn only because it qualifies my definition of porn, not a "absolute" definition of porn.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The citizens of every country in the world are quite frankly too busy working for a living to express any concern over how their government identifies them.
It is almost a rule of thumb that governments can get away with just about anything up to a certain threshold, and that threshold is quite high. It's not until things become incredibly bad, to the point that it's nearly impossible to lead any kind of meaningful life in a country, that the citizens rise up, tear down their government, and start from scratch. The whole routine then starts over again, with an initially small government growing and slowly extending its tentacles into every facet of life, until it is once again so involved that it must be fought against once more.
It is this way because until things become that bad, the citizens of the country are so busy earning a living and dealing with the zillions of problems that bombard them every day, that they have little or no time or energy to deal with trivialities like voting, being politically involved, etc.
This is a country whose stock in trade is conformity.
Interesting given the extraordinary difficulty for outsiders to gain citizenship anyway.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Part of the basis of the decision was that "since there is a legal framework for punishing any leakage of data, there is no concern of data leakage occurring" (p10-11); this suggests to me that if such leakage does occur (and one of the affected parties is actually bothered, since the courts won't let you sue on someone else's behalf), this has a potential to be overturned later. They also explicitly state (p12) that the clause making misuse illegal overrides the clause allowing municipalities to change the rules on use of the data.
It's worth noting that the juuki database only holds four pieces of data: name, date of birth, gender, and address. Not to downplay the potential dangers of any data being stored in electronic databases, of course; but as the decision points out, these tend to be floating around all over the place, and you have to give them out for just about anything you want to do at the city office anyway.
For the curious (and Japanese-literate), the full decision can be found at: http://www.courts.go.jp/hanrei/pdf/20080306142412.pdf
in the US the digits in the social security number - tell what state you were born in and roughly what year you were born in also since we put our name, date of birth, address, phone number (oh and usually just by the first name we can determine gender) on every form we fill out for hospitals, schools, bank loans, opening accounts, applying for credit cards, going to court, purchasing insurance, buying a car, etc. none of the info is secure any way, we give it away all day every day, and that's not even considering the fact that you have to show your picture id to prove age, to get a passport, enroll in college, make a transaction in a bank, or heaven help you if you need to go to court. exactly how secure can this info really be anyway? half the world probably already has it.
It astonishes you that the millions of citizens of Japan don't agree with the Slashdot privacy uber alles mentality?
Why do people have such a problem with the government having the same information we give away to credit card companies and banks all the time?
twitter, I'd like to read your response to this, if you have some time. Thanks.
We know waterboarding is torture. The Administration doing it knows it is torture, but doesn't care. There's a difference.
Why fear a collected centralized source of information that gives general information about your person ran by the government (or some partially privatized-government combination) when, for the most part, the same information can be obtained by anyone with competence with a web browser and a few search engines? Welcome to the Information Age.
The government tip-toes around in slippers regarding issues like this, instead of putting on the jackboots the way the Americans or British do.
Jukinet has been up and running for years, but the central government has been unable to force take-up, just as they cannot enforce take-up of the so-called compulsory social security or health care systems, or just as NHK cannot force people to pay the compulsory subscription. If Japan were the USA they would just put a gun to people's heads, so-to-speak, and enforce participation.
The way it has worked up to now is that individuals elect to sign up for the Jukinet smart card, and less than two percent of the population has done this. There's no actual requirement anywhere to get one, and it seems to be regarded as a slight potential convenience.
My theory is that there are are at least a couple reasons why the Japaneese government seems so ineffective in putting teeth into enforcement of compliance with such systems.
1) There is a lingering sense of respect for "rights of the individual" that remains since the various reforms after the War, and it's tied in with left wing politics. This is why it's taken 30 years to build the second runway at Narita airport.
2) Second reason is bureacratic turf wars. Jukinet is the pet project of one not-particularly-powerful ministry, and they do not have the power to enforce take-up, although they certainly did manage to get to the Supreme Court in this case (which has handed down a judgment that is rather short-sighted about privacy, given the history of privacy problems that we have seen in Japan in recent years).
In short, Japan has all the privacy problems of other developed countries (and perhaps even more so, given the ubiquitous video surveillance), but has soft spots in its central adminstration in unexpected places.
Incidentally, if it were my job to increase Jukinet card takeup, I would offer people the option of getting them in a design theme of Hello Kitty, or Snoopy, or Audrey Hepburn or something such, and then add electronic money and/or train pass functionality, slightly discounted. WHOOOOOSH, massive take-up overnight.
Their obsession with conformity has also graced them with the highest suicide rate in the world.
People miss the point of citing statistics like wealth and crime. Wealth and crime in it of themselves are worthless. Crime in particular is a silly stat to obsess over. If you want to eliminate crime, just knock everyone into a coma and keep them alive with feeding tubes. The reason why we want wealth and low crime is to bring about happiness. When your pursuit of these things fail to produce more happiness, you are failing. The real purpose of a government should be to bring about the greatest happiness for their citizens and sustain their happiness. All the wealth and low crime in the world won't make a damned bit of difference if you are so miserable you throw yourself off a bridge.
If the point of life is happiness, the Japanese fail spectacularly. The Japanese are roughly the last people in this world we should be seeking to emulate. Don't get me wrong, a lot of great things come out of Japan that I have met have been great people, but the emulation of their miserable and unhappy society ranks roughly last on my list of things to do.
No the point is that they're ALREADY doubtlessly tracking the citizens... it's more a question of red pill/blue pill, do you want to hold the knowledge in your hand, or do you want to pretend it doesn't exist.
I really dont see whats the big deal in terms of ID.In Malaysia and Singapore,there have been ID cards since the 40's and people have not riled up against it.No,we have not complained about it and no we have not thrown a tantrum about it.Is it just a US and time phase of paranoia or is there anything to be genuinely concerned about?
C) They all look alike in Japan, so the system is useless.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Steve Jobs has his own unique ID number...
It's his MAC adddress.
Well what do you expect from a Supreme Court ruling based on a constitution written by US lawyers?
Having said that, at least the Japanese Constitution explicitly bans torture. So it's at least an improvement on the US document that inspired it in that respect. Someone should show it to the current US President.
- 1.5% of all people is using this system.
- 39.1billion yens are spent for system construction
- maintenance cost is unknown.
- Government says 905 hours of officers have been saved and the overall government's benefit is 91.7 billion yens/year.
(I think the personal data stored against that ID covers name, address, date of birth, and gender takes storage space less than 1KB. for 130M people whole data requires 130GB space such a huge space that costs so much, ah. moreover, the cost savings and benefits don't seem reasonable because I couldn't find no papers of Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development , who is believed wrote the paper for an evidence. The paper seems good, for its title.)Micro Stats.
It requires some IC card and its reader device to use online authentication system. Totally they cost about 5,000 yens for preparation. We'd better ride a train and go to city office.
you guys are missing the point... the individual states already do this to the extent that they deem necessary. forcing a biometric identification on individuals is not a power enumerated in the Constitution.
Hey ! US Constitution was the MOST Liberal constitution every written.
It virtually guaranteed freedom from persecution based on religion, caste, creed, color or anything.
It was the first constitution that was 200 years ahead of its time in securing people against unwarranted searches.
It also made sure Justice was not delayed and guaranteed an accused was judged by peers.
The recent assault on constitution culminating in Bush approving torture, and wanting retroactive immunity, even though constitution rejects it is an aberration.
Coming to japan, what can you expect from a country that thought surrendering soldiers were cowards; whose soliders sent sent hair, finger nails to their families as soveneirs, that Baatan March was a pleasant trip, that STILL practices discrimination against its own people and thinks derogatory about all non-japanese.
I do hope their extreme xenophobia, introverted culture dies with them slowly.
I hope in 200 years, japan as a distinct country becomes extinct.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Operator : "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut . May I have your order?"
Customer: "Hello, can I order.."
Operator : "Can I have your multi purpose card number first, Sir?"
Customer: "It's eh..., hold on....6102049998-45-54610"
Operator : "OK... you're... Mr. Sheehan and you're calling from 17 Meadow Drive. Your home number is 494 2366, your office 745 2302 and your mobile is 014 266 2566. Would you like to have the delivery made to 17 Meadow Drive?
Customer: "Yes, how did you get all my phone numbers?"
Operator : "We are connected to the system Sir"
Customer: "May I order your Seafood Pizza..."
Operator : "That's not a good idea Sir"
Customer: "How come?"
Operator : "According to your medical records, you have high blood pressure and even higher cholesterol level Sir"
Customer: "What?... What do you recommend then?"
Operator : "Try our Low Fat Soybean Yogurt Pizza.You'll like it"
Customer: "How do you know for sure?" Operator : "You borrowed a book entitled "Popular Soybean Yogurt Dishes" from the National Library last week Sir"
Customer: "OK I give up... Give me three family sized ones then, how much will that cost?
Operator : "That should be enough for your family of 10, Sir. The total is $ 49.99
Customer: "Can I pay by credit card?"
Operator : "I'm afraid you have to pay us cash, Sir. Your credit card is over the limit and you're owing your bank $3720.55 since October last year"
Operator : "That's not including the late payment charges on your housing loan Sir.
Customer: "I guess I have to run to the neighborhood ATM and withdraw Some cash before your guy arrives"
Operator : "You can't do that Sir. Based on the records, you've reached your daily limit on machine withdrawal today"
Customer: "Never mind just send the pizzas, I'll have the cash ready. How long is it gonna take anyway?"
Operator : "About 45 minutes Sir, but if you can't wait you can always come and collect it on your motorcycle..."
Customer: " What the..?"
Operator : "According to the details in system, you own a Harley,...registration number E1123..."
Customer: "@#%/$@&?#"
Operator : "Better watch your language Sir. Remember on 15th July 1987 You were convicted of using abusive language to a policeman...
Customer:( Speechless)
Operator : "Is there anything else Sir?"
Customer: "Nothing... by the way... aren't you giving me that 3 free bottles of Pepsi as advertised?"
Operator : "We normally would Sir, but based on your records you're also diabetic....... "
I think there might also be a commonly used third pill, "Yeah maybe, but so what?". --I think it might be green. (As in, the grass on either side of the fence being sat on.)
-FL
Ever heard of error checking? One database is a major pain to correct, especially since databases of this size tend to be "Correct until proven otherwise."
I'm also not particularly fond of a system where you have to hope that when (not if) your information gets leaked, you're too small of a target to get noticed. But then again, that's an issue we have already.
You have the wrong idea of how this works.
It's my understanding that they want to tie bank accounts, driver's license, social insurance / security (I'm Canadian), passport etc. to one single card.
Right now, everything is "tied" to your name. The problem is that for many people the name isn't unique. That's why a unique number is a good idea.
If you lose this card you are completely fsck'd. And if someone wants to steal your identity all they have to do is either steal or forge your card.
Huh? An id card merely says "John Smith (23984211038) was born on 4/1/1981, is a US citizen, looks like this, has this signature, and resides here." The cards are hard to forge. Such cards aren't used to replace ATM cards or anything else. They are used when you go to the bank in person and interact with a teller, in which case they are no worse than a driver's license. In the future, these cards are going to have more biometric identifiers (in addition to face and signature), meaning that they are even harder to forge and for people to pretend that they are you.
Id cards are reasonable protection against identity theft. They are used when you need to identify yourself uniquely to another person, and for that purpose, they are a whole lot better than the alternatives (driver's licenses, birth certificates, utility bills, etc.). And if security is really important, people can require those alternative in addition.
Now, there are some civil liberties arguments that one should not be able to identify people uniquely with ease. But those arguments are the opposite of yours: you want sound identification, you simply misunderstand how id cards provide it.
Well, it's all good, until somebody breaches the government's private key.
I don't want my identity dependent on the sleepy guard watching the room where the government's private key is stored.
It's not a transparent system. Why is that so hard for people to understand? Are you also willing to trust the government to use PKI techniques to let you vote over the web?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Think about that. PKI requires competency to be used correctly.
And you are depending on the government's incompetency.
In this case, Juki.net _is_ scheduled to be used for everything, eventually, when the storm of protests blows over.
Oh. Did you know that Japan is busy implementing computerized voting machines? Already in operation in several places, and they are just now thinking about maybe implementing a paper trail.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Uhm, money is insurable. Is your identity insurable?
The solution is to quit using cards to "identify" people. Identity is necessarily out-of-band data for every real system.
If that system doesn't work, then it's okay to use id cards for single purposes. You only need id cards for a few purposes, and it is not unreasonable to carry one card for each:
Driver's license. It should be issued be the authority that licenses a person to drive.
Credit id. This is something of a new concept, but it should be issued by the authority behind the credit --the bank you consider your primary bank.
Why on earth don't credit cards have pictures on them?
Professional ids. Again, the issuing authority would be the certifying authority.
I'm thinking about voter ids and trying to remember why it would be wrong to have pictures on those, other than cost, and the temptation to use them as a national id.
We need to either get rid of taxes or bring them back to the local level. Then the city could issue a tax id if it found some worth in it. But taxes should not be so vital to a person's well-being that there would be any reason for someone to forge a tax id.
Three ids. Three, maybe four separate ids. When that is not good enough, there is something wrong.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
So, you're saying my identity should be all contained in a card?
I'm going to let someone mark me as a troll while you think about that.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
So, for years, the government has been surreptitiously watching me. Now they want to be be able to watch me with impunity.
I think you are the one who has been brain-washed. Brain washed right out of you, maybe?
(Sorry to be rude, but I'm hoping to stimulate to think, here.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Here in the Netherlands we already have such a number for a long time. First it was only used for taxes, but slowly it was used for more and more things. Recently it has been renamed into "citizen service number", suggesting that it is a number for the government to serve its citizens better. Of course, it is just the other way around. Now the Dutch government has decided that everyone who gets an ID card, and really you cannot do without one if you want to open a bank account and things like such, needs to provide his/her fingerprints. These fingerprints are stored in a national database and at first this was only going to be used to be able to find fake ID cards. Now our government want to open this database for criminal investigations as well. There is also a law that every citizen older than 13 should be able to identify him/herself in case the police makes a request. And the police has been used this to fine many people. I even heard of a story of a person who was a victim of a car accident, got a ticket when he could not show his ID card. And yes all your bank accounts are linked to the your ID number and the government has the right to see all your bank transactions by court order. If you want to have a job, you need a bank account, because employers in the Netherlands do not like they idea to pay you in cash.
The problems occur when they decide to change their core business.
No, there is not much keeping the _people_ implementing the law from changing it, especially when you make it easy for them to retaliate against you when you challenge the changes they make to the laws.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This is the whole problem. The bigger the system the easier it is to crash it.
Absolute power doesn't just corrupt people.
Mass is real, whether it's data or gears.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I am not familiar enough with the Japanese constitution to know what kind of legal issues Juki.net raises, but I have to be wondering why they were keeping it quiet so long.
And I realize now that I should have been making a fuss about a job I had four years ago.
Anyway, a bit off-topic, but that the US national government is using various loopholes (like federal, vs. national) to sidestep the Constitution on these sorts of things is evidence that the US government is out of control, and therefore that the paranoia is based in reality.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The problem is not the ID or the card! The problem is your government! You really think they won't be able to uniquely recognize you just because you don't have a card or a state issued number?????
:-)
Come on, get a life...
btw. my "private" unique number over here is 1604976334015
Anonymity is just security via obscurity applied to people. Any IT person worth a damn knows security via obscurity is a terrible methodology; once broken, it can never be put back together, and worse, there's no way to know when it's been broken. Eventually, someone will come up with a way to correlate even the most obfuscated and separated data, and they may or may not tell you that they can do it.
Instead, rely on proven methods like encryption, legal assurances, and simple discretion about what you put in the public eye, with an expectation that public starts where your walls end. We're approaching a small-town expectation of privacy, applied globally. You can't hide from your neighbor.
I mean, don't do they all look the same?
Something they did thirty or so years back (Working from very poor memory, it was not my record, but my manager's at radio snack.):
In case you can't tell, I don't think much of your plan for how your girlfriend/wife/partner is supposed to figure out that the imposter is not you.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Unifying the ID system increases the value of the ID card well beyond the cost to obtain one illegitimately.
And the people to whom it becomes most immediately valuable are the people who have some vested interested in keeping their party in office, which is the very people who are issuing the cards.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
He just presented you with a very good representative version of the argument against this kind of ID.
How do you ID your partner?
To make it more obvious, how do you ID [insert role or person here]?
Frankly, assuming the existence of such ID cards, I'm not going to laugh at all when girls want to see a guy's ID before going out with him the first time. It's a logical extension of the concept. And girls should be less trusting of the guys they go out with up front, really.
But it makes much more sense for the girl to talk with other girls who know the guy or whatever.
Actual identity is out-of-band data in any system we can build, computerized or not.
Building systems to manage identity on a limited basis in a localized scope may make some sense.
Universal ID is an oxymoron.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Of course, those statement are completely unfounded, and moreover they're ridiculous, as is yours. Yes, there are obviously reasons for their high suicide rate, and some of these are cultural, but many are related to the recession that Japan has still not completely recovered from (you know, the one that neatly coincides with the massive spike in suicide rates that the media goes on and on about). People miss the point of citing statistics like wealth and crime. Wealth and crime in it of themselves are worthless. Crime in particular is a silly stat to obsess over. [snip ridiculous exaggeration] The reason why we want wealth and low crime is to bring about happiness. When your pursuit of these things fail to produce more happiness, you are failing. You must be joking. Go ask the Russians how they feel about the relationship between wealth, the crime rate, and their own happiness. In fact, ask any Eastern European how they felt during the 1990's when there was barely enough food to go around, and when mafias (mafia as in armed thugs, not as in IP lawyers), and how that impacted their happiness. The pursuit of security and prosperity are part of the pursuit of happiness - they're practically prerequisites for any sort of wide-spread lasting happiness. And despite the fact that Japan's success in these fields hasn't made it the happiest nation in the world, it would certainly be worse off were they allowed to rot in favor of whatever you think leads to happiness. All the wealth and low crime in the world won't make a damned bit of difference if you are so miserable you throw yourself off a bridge. We covered this already. They make a great deal of difference to those who are poor, or are the victims of crime - whether they chose to kill themselves or not. If the point of life is happiness, the Japanese fail spectacularly. No, they don't. War-torn African countries fail spectacularly. Iraq fails spectacularly. The former USSR failed spectacularly during the years following the Communist collapse (and parts of it still do). Japan is usually ranked somewhere between the top third and the top half of the any ranking of nations by happiness that I've ever seen. That's mediocre at worst, and most of what I've heard from the Japanese people I know and the members of my family that have visited Japan suggests that the reality is far better than that.
...their miserable and unhappy society... Look, if you want to call their populace miserable because the fraction of their population that commits suicide isn't quite as tiny as that of the other G8 countries despite it's aging population and recent economic troubles, and call their society a failure (which only belittles their incredible achievements), then I'm sorry but you're being an idiot. And so are those that modded you all the way to +5 Insightful.As I read the reports I've seen, your local government offered you the choice, but the supreme court just said that they didn't have the authority to do so.
A little entry point on the subject and problems of caste in Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_divisions_of_society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
We also have IDs, the format is YYMMDD/wxyz, where wxyz is unique for given birth date, for womans, they have first number of month increased by 50, so 8820711/1234 is man, 825711/1234 will be woman. The whole number (without slash) is multiplier of 11, so you can check if it is valid or not (just a check, not real validity). Thees IDs is used everywhere. People above 16 year olf also have ID cards which has it's own unique number not related to first ID.
This isn't quite accurate; almost nobody has the card, true, but the data itself is being stored nonetheless. The card only serves as the token to pull out your specific record from the database.
That said, there are still a few municipalities that are refusing to connect their systems to the juuki-net. The most well-known is Yamatsuri-cho in Fukushima, which has held out from the start due to concerns about data security (and despite the central government declaring their refusal to connect "illegal"). There's also Suginami-ku in Tokyo and Kawasaki City, if I recall correctly.
While I think the Juuki Net system is a total crock of shit, I would just like to point out that in contrast to how the submitter presented it, it has been quite openly discussed since its inception, and there's been at least some debate about its security and usefulness (or did the submitter think that a suit can make it to the Supreme Court in secret?).
It's not a great idea, and it's as full of holes as a sieve, but if you think you (especially as a foreign resident) are going to get something done about it now that the court's ruled it's secure... well, good luck is all I can say.
The only "Watergate" Japan has ever experienced, the only thing that's ever shaken confidence in their own government, is to lose War War II. I wonder sometimes if a couple of atom bombs was really enough, e.g., to defeat Tojo and the militarists, or if Truman's nuclear options were just the irritant that allowed the Japanese Navy to stage a quiet palace coup and bring the war to an end. Consider that in many Japanese RPG's, the ultimate weapons are identified, not just by, but as "crests," i.e., Infinity Crest, and so forth — seals of approval like 007's license to kill, taken by synedoche as the part pointing to the whole. So it makes perfect sense for Japanese to ID themselves, like counting the hairs on the Emperor's head. I suspect if they think about it at all, it represents baseline good standing in an extremely exclusive club. American libertarian consternation about universal registration is the true incomprehensible for Japan. Are Americans capable of self-governance?
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly
thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was
perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in
which you were required to provide absolute proof of your iden-
tity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome
just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential
problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an
epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash
point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around
waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits
of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant
(or nearly instant - a good six or seven seconds in tedious
reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions
about members of their family they didn't even remember they
had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours.
And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If
you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty
or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.
Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of
information about you, your body and your life into one all-
purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around
in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest
triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.
-
Instantly every laser was diverted to the little card and Swept
backwards and forwards over it and in it, examining and reading
every molecule.
Then, just as suddenly, they stopped.
The entire flock of little virtual inspectors snapped to attention.
`Nice to see you, Mr Harl,' they said in smarmy unison.
`Is there anything we can do for you?'
I wonder in countries that use national IDs more comprehesively than the US if they suffer from more ID theft. The US's problem is in part due to the laziness of commercial datbases to use US tax ID numbers. Its only been recently this has been partly prohibited. But the horse is long out of the barn.
someone may have already made this point but I didn't see it scanning through the comments: Japan has long had a paper-based family registration ("koseki") system. births, deaths, marriages, current address are all recorded in a file (ofetn one sheet of paper) at the city offices where the head-of-family lives. Marriages transfer one person from one family register to another. New heads of household are established as generations become independent, but can be tracked way way back. So the government already has an awful lot of this nformation already correlated and accessible in local offices; the new system sounds like it's pulling all that together into a national DB so they can get the info without calling the local office and having someone read it out over the phone.
You hit the nail RIGHT on the head.
I am so sick and tired of having to re-fill forms and providing information to agencies or entities that already have a working or business or mandatory relationship with the one transferring or handling my existing information -- just to prove who I am and to obtain service. I for years have (cynically, but I guess factually) presumed that the various government agencies already have the information and just pretend not to have it. It is to provice "peace of mind" to dolts who think the government does NOT have this information.
It is an astounding waste of time to go through the game of fooling oneself that this agency or entity aquiring information is getting it for the first time. Oh, *IT* might be, but why can't the one WITH it just accept my verbal. Why can't I (after "proving" my identity on the phone via challenge/reply/PIN/etc) just avoid the paper trail. The information about me in the past (not the one I'm dealing with now) can and has been screwed by carelessness, merged computer banks, and so on.
Someone said the "Japanese have an irrational acceptance of authority and conformism." And? So what? It's ONLY the people with intent or holding resservation to COMMIT crimes (or become agents of one or more governments...) who have a true need to be totally anonymous, right? Besides, when *I* wa in Japan (for 3 months) I had *no* problems with the government getting information on me. I like the people, the culture, the architecture (of new things, anyway) the technology, the food, club scenes, and more. And, no, it wasnt' about being caught up in the "feeling of being there". I would do the same thing (give up information) to visit Korea, too. Had to turn over my passport and driver's license (IIRC, but definitely my p/p) when I was in a town in central Vietnam in 1998.
Speaking of other governments, if THEY can get the same information when people travel to them, then what is the problem with domestic agencies obtaining and collating it? It's not (yet) as if the government is wholesale "solving" crime cases by taking entire dossiers on people and "fitting them" to the crime. That's already done with the most MINIMAL of fraudulent, contrived "evidence". Besides, the more the data exists in innumerable places, the more difficult it *might* be for a corrupt agency to use data it can't be sure is contradictory and more trusted than the corrupted, condemning data they feed to a court or jury or judge for a warrant or for conviction rates enhancement.
Maybe I'm missing something?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I have to agree with you, Soup.
I'm picturing something along the military ID system today. You lose your card, you go down to the local office responsible for issuing/updating/replacing cards.
You tell them your name and ID number. Can't remember your ID number*? Simply provide enough information to uniquely identify yourself, such as birthdate, birthplace, parents' names, etc...
They then pull up your information, verifying additional information that's hard to fake, like a stored image of your old picture, fingerprint, bloodtype, perhaps even DNA.
While you won't be able to kill fake IDs completely, you could make it very difficult to do so. Control the card stock, holographic technology, etc... The real kicker would be the addition of online verification via PIN or fingerprint.
*Not everyone has their social memorized.
I don't read AC A human right
I peruse the English website version of the Asahi Shimbun regularly. They have an editorial on this very subject. http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200803080056.html
Japanese people already are tracked, they have been since the Sakoku period. Every Japanese person has a "koseki tohon" registered at the local office (yakuba if you're in the countryside, kuyakusho in tokyo, etc).
It records your address, family, etc etc. Whenever you do anything (get a passport, etc) you wind up interacting with your local office to prove your identity. If you move to a new area? You have two weeks to report your new address.
(It amazes me that foreigners get so uptight about it. It's the same basic system for everybody, it's just that foreigners get their own window and to fill out forms in English.)
My wife has to deal with this every time we do something, and the system is sloooooooow. Our son was just born, the US requirements were truly obnoxious (to the point that one of the window staff at the embassy didn't even understand them properly) but, once you jump through all the hopes (get your grade school to write a personalized letter swearing you're in the US for period x; etc) the passport was produced in two weeks flat.
Japanese Embassy? Very nice, very friendly, very helpful. Took two months -just- to get the kid registered in Japan under her name ("seki wo ireru"). Then they start the passport process.
You can say it's a "cultural difference"; but the fact is that they already track people, and the process is so manual as to be amazing. When we got married there was a team of three people filling out the paperwork (one guy spent a half an hour painstakingly reviewing the way she was supposed to fill out the name change request form).
Deciding to computerize the system is almost elementary.
Many of you have posted that this is not really an issue for many in other countries, but don't forget this is Japan.
And in true J-style the government here will screw it up somehow, it will get corrupted, it will be hacked, it will be insert any possible combination of misuse) and it will happen.
Just look at the whole pension problem here!
Why no outrage or concern from it's citizens? Again this is Japan we are talking about.
The Japanese school system does not teach people to be thinkers, inventors innovators
or creative individuals, they teach them to be "Japanese" and in that, that means
obey, be passive and let your corporate crony government run everything in a slipshod manner..
but but, but they have such kawaii characters for everything, and manga and Akihabara, please...
As a 'Gaijin' here in Tokyo, Japan, I realize the problems, faults of my own country but the Japanese take things here to an extra level.
There is no such thing as privacy. The sooner you understand that, the happier you will be.
While there is a longstanding registration system for us foreigners in Japan, what astonishes me is how the government can secretly implement such a system for its citizens, and how little concern the media and Japanese citizens in general display about the privacy implications.
This was not done at all secretly, and there was plenty of concern shown by citizens and the media before the system was first rolled out. Was the person who sent in this story even in Japan at the time?
Japan has had a thorough-going Family Register system in place since beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate over 300 years ago. Juki Net is an electronic extension. Japanese are obsessed with verifying that people are actually who they say they are. Thus, there is really nothing new here. What will be new (and disturbing) is if ordinary citizens are compelled to start carrying around identity cards and are required to produce them on demand by police.
> no need to go by door to door
sure, u get a nice clean number, but u also miss out on the chance to diddle^H^H^H^H^H^Hadjust the count to favor ur political goals;-}