Japan Refused To Help NSA Tap Asia's Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The NSA sought the Japanese government's cooperation to wiretap fiber-optic cables carrying phone and data across the Asia-Pacific region but the request was rejected. The NSA wanted to intercept personal information including Internet activity and phone calls passing through Japan from Asia including China. The Japanese government refused because it was illegal and would need to involve a massive number of private sector workers. Article 35 of the Japanese Constitution protects against illegal search and seizure."

Comments

Why does Japan's constitution prevent surveillance

[kawabago]

The American constitution is also supposed to prevent unlawful searches, so why does the Japanese constitution succeed and the American constitution fails to stop illegal capture of electronic communication? Do the Americans just not care?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember their constitution only gives rather vague rights to people, and only if they aren't foreigners or the emperor (no, the emperor doesn't constitutionally have any rights, for the record). That doesn't mean much, it's probably more a culture thing.

Re:Why does Japan's constitution prevent surveilla

[AmiMoJo]

Americans don't care. Really. You only have to look at the reaction to scandals in Japan compared to the US.

A few years ago the minister in charge of tax had to resign because he made a mistake on his tax return. The leader of one of the opposition parties (there are several, and they are not completely ineffective) had to resign because he gave his support to one of the other members of the party who then turned out to have lied about something. Bullshit from politicians is not tolerated.

Their electoral system has some advantages too. Candidates are not allowed to have TV or radio advertising, or even put videos on the internet etc. Coverage is strictly controlled to make sure everyone gets fair coverage, and money is much less of a factor since there is little to actually spend it on beyond a few small posters. Politicians have to actually go and canvas their constituents.

Lobbying is also heavily controlled, and since money is much less of an issue lobbyists have more limited power.

It's far from perfect but people take politics seriously and bad behaviour is severely punish. In comparison US politicians are armour plated, image managed, and awash with dirty money. The NSA scandal demonstrates just how bad it is. Why aren't the FBI arresting NSA staff for violating the constitution? Why are the senators and judges who approved it not under investigation?

Unfortunately the UK seems to be nearly as bad. Our one saving grace is that the EU is going to investigate, assuming we don't pull out before they are finished.

Standard PR (i.e. propaganda) trick ...

[jc42]

Note that the summary says "The NSA sought the Japanese government's cooperation to wiretap fiber-optic cables ... but the request was rejected." The use of "the request" here is a standard rhetorical trick to get the reader/listener to believe that there was only one request, and it was rejected. But the English is ambiguous. There could have been many such requests, of which one was rejected, and the statement would still be true. They didn't mention how other such requests were handled. The inference should probably be "... but we won't want to tell you how the other requests were handled".

This is a special case of the general concept of "plausible deniability". Look it up.

Re:WTF

[girlintraining]

I'm glad Japan still seems to have some honour left.

It never ceases to amaze me how often people ascribe general characteristics like honor, integrity, etc., to governments, on the basis of singular examples. The Japanese government, in this very specific case, did what you consider to be the right thing. But to ascribe their entire government, as a complete entity, as having honor on this basis, is premature and unwarranted.

Look at how the Japanese government handled the Fukoshima disaster; or rather, didn't. A great many would not consider it honorable to keep citizens in a hot zone for well after it was apparent there were serious safety concerns, simply and largely out of a desire to save face. This is a glitch of Japanese culture; They are downright Russian in their inability to acknowledge a mistake when it happens. It's hardly the only time this less than endearing quality of Japanese culture has reared its ugly head either -- the internet is littered with examples of how situations were made needlessly worse because of it.

Every government. Every. Government. will at times act in act in accordance with your individual beliefs regarding fundamental human virtues... and at other times will not. This is because governments are collections of people and organizations that are often in opposition to one another, and in a dance with so many steps and so many partners, you simply cannot judge the whole as you would an individual. Governments cannot be judged on their individual actions -- at the micro scale, it is simply too chaotic and random. We can only begin to understand whether a government adheres to a given virtue by looking at the aggregate sum of their actions and the actual (not intended or stated) result.

Because of this, I would not say the Japanese government is either less, or more, honorable because of its refusal to allow the NSA to tap Asia's internet. As an aggregate entity, I would say that the Japanese government would like greater cooperation with the United States in the areas of defense and economics, but places a great deal of value on its cultural identity and independence from all sovereign powers, the US included. Cooperation in this particular case would have enabled a high level of industrial espionage and the Japanese culture views business as being nearly a literal equivalent to war; They take industrial espionage very, very seriously. To cooperate with the NSA in this regard would have serious reprecussions with the business leaders within Japan.

To say that this behavior though is 'honorable' is a stretch. They are protecting their own interests. It has nothing to do with the Japanese constitution, but rather how they do business. In a very real sense, the NSA is a business competitor.

Re:envy

[AmiMoJo]

I'll give you xenophobia, but not racism. It's more complicated that simple prejudice.

Japanese culture is very averse to things that cause people to feel uncomfortable. It is also very unique and hard for foreigners to understand. There are also practical issues, like the writing system being extremely difficult, although it isn't too bad for Chinese people. The nursing situation in particular is largely caused by the nursing exam being in Japanese, which is understandable since nurses need to be able to read instructions.

This does make some Japanese people reluctant to interact with foreigners, and it doesn't help that some visitors are really quite ignorant. They shout in English and expect people to understand. I remember overhearing some guy complaining that something he wanted was "like fifty dollars!" and expecting the guy who clearly didn't speak English to somehow understand and know what the dollar conversion rate was.

If you can get past this initial fear of misunderstanding and embarrassment most Japanese people are friendly and helpful. I have noticed that often people will try to ignore me until it becomes obvious I can speak Japanese, and then they treat me like they would anyone else without any prejudice that I can see. The first time I realized I had really started to integrate was when an old women casually asked me to open a bottle for her. It's hard to explain but somehow your mannerisms and the fact that you blend in without making a fuss send out a signal to people that they can relax.

We get the same sort of thing in the UK. People worry that foreign looking people won't be able to speak English or that they won't be able to understand their accent. We treat them pretty much the same way as the Japanese do, expecting them to learn English and integrate (we tried multiculturalism).