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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)
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.
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...
You can't take the sky from me...
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
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)
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
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 Japanese have an irrational acceptance of authority and conformism.
What's so irrational about it? They didn't always have such an acceptance. This is a country that has existed for thousands of years, the first couple thousand of which were spent in a state of near-constant civil war without any centralized government. It was only after a strong central government was formed - and further refined with our help - that they became a prosperous, peaceful country with one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Acceptance of authority and conformism has brought them peace, prosperity, high educational standards, low crime, good health and long life expectancy. They are no less "free" than we are, either. Their government does not wiretap their citizens' phone calls or endorse torture, and their taxes do not go to supporting a massive military industrial complex or a set of oil cartels. So in what way is their culture "irrational"? Especially in comparison to ours?
Accept the fact that not everybody thinks the way Americans do. We are not the center of the universe and the way we think is not the "right" way.
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.
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.