A report of the struggle for people's privacy against Japanese Government

yasuda yukihiro (JCA-NET)

I'm glad to have a chance to give a short report about a struggle concerning privacy issues by people in Japan.

At first, I'd like to explain in a brief. July, 1999, power party LDP(jimin-to) and LP(jiyuu-to), conservativeparty, and middle-going Komeito expressed their political cooperation, and started so called 'JIJIKO' coalition government. They were overwhelming majority in Japanese Diet. They forced to pass nationalistic laws such as "Hinomaru-Kimigayo (national flag and national anthem)" law, wiretapping law and revision of resident's inventory law (including national resident number article). Now they are proposing "Aum new law", which is said to aim to control "Aum shinri kyo". However, in fact, people say this law is aiming to control not only Aum but anti-government parties.

And more, JIJIKO is watching for a chance to revise the Constitution of Japan, which we are proud of as "peace constitution", not have been revised for over 50 years no matter how strong movement to revise from right-wing parties. We regard those nationalistic, anti-democratic and anti-constitutional laws are the first step to revise the Constitution of Japan. In other words, they are aiming at opening the way to the war for Japan, which we are strongly against of.

A fear of Japan's nationalism or militarism is not only a problem of Japan. Korean people may know of this very well. Don't rewind clock. We, Japanese people, strongly hope to you for solidarity against Japanese militarism.

Well let's discuss privacy issues.

In Japan, the Constitution of Japan prohibits to break secret of communication as well as censorship. This article had been added because Japanese police and information agency cracked down ruthlessly on anti-government movement through their censorship and wiretapping, and it led Japan to cruel and reckless war at last. Because of this article, police has been prohibited to wiretapping officially. In 1986, the fact that police had been wiretapping on the telephone line of an executive of JCP (Japanese Communists Party) had revealed. They got strong criticism but they kept denying the fact of the wiretapping until now. However, from a testimony of witness, who made wiretapping device for police, people said that this case was merely a tip of an iceberg.

However, since several years ago, police wanted to officialize wiretapping, and they made every lobbying. Since 1997, they proposed a set of laws called "structurized crime law" including wiretapping law at last.

This law aims to crack down the "Mafia". Despite of many legislation to control Japanese violent crime groups, or Mafia, those are not so successfull for the crime such as mass murdering by Aum shinri kyo.

In 1997, at the time that the wiretapping law had proposed, JCA and Japanese networker began to organize a movement for anti-wiretapping. We made a group named "Stop wiretapping, networker's liaison party" Of course, other NGOs, lawyers, journalists, labor unions made their opinion against the law successively. The bill seemed to be difficult to pass the Diet. Because Japanese Diet has the two-chamber system, even if the bill had passed the Lower House, it was difficult to legislate if the Upper House denied the bill. At that time, the majority of the Upper House was a nongovernment party, so there was low possibility for the bill to pass the Upper House. "Stop wiretapping, networker's liaison party" began to have many symposium, workshop continuously from July. We did also a campaign using email and WWW.

However, real movement began 1998, when the governmental party decided to legislate the bill in 1999. We organized a group named "Network anti surveillance project" and started real movement with various groups.

In this stage, the members of assembly of nongovernmental party as well as ordinary people seemed not to realize the danger of the bill.

Japanese people's sence of privacy is not different to Korean's. Ordinary people showed a tendency that "I'm not related because I don't have any relation to crime", that was the result of the propaganda from government side that wiretapping bill was needed to investigate vicious crimes. At the year of 1998, about 80% of people approved the bill.

Adding to this, Social Democratic Party and Communists Party were against the bill from the beginning, but Democratic Party and Komeito did not determine their stance for the bill. We started our struggle from to appeal to people and to make turn. Democratic Party and Komeito's attitude to opposite side.

In order to this, we made many documents to point our the problem of the bill, and started to lobbying to members of assembly. In 1999, Democratic Party determine their position toward opposite to the bill at last, but Komeito was not determined yet, so the target of our struggle was concentrated on them.

During this, we had a symposium to which we invited Mr. Barry Steinhard, who was a former president of EFF and now a chairman of Cyber Liberties Task Force of ACLU, and made Internet campaign. JinboNet had joined this campaign from Korea and supported us. With those acts, the movement to oppose to wiretapping law was gradually bigger and bigger. The bill's problem was, not only normal phone line but also every communication including Internet and other digital communication had includen in the bill as wiretapping target. At the beginning, however, the members of assembly and, even staff of the Ministry of Justice which made the bill, had not so sufficient knowledge about wiretapping

the Internet. Because of this, we began to point out the contradiction or technical difficulty of the bill. We also had lectures about the problem of wiretapping the net for the members of assembly and journalists.

Unfortunately, in spite of our effort, Komeito joined to governmental party, and the bill had passed the Lower House in June. From the time, our struggle against the bill was concentrated into next vote at the Upper House. JCA-NET utilize the Internet fully, and did everything we were able to do. Our effort made 60% of people's attitude turn to opposite to the bill (note that about 80% of people approved the bill at first!) However, in August, 1999, the majority of the Upper House took a vote by force and the bill was approved.

The problem of Japanese wiretapping bill and our struggle hereafter

In Korea, Japanese wiretapping law seems to be regarded as more "progressive" then Korean Communication Secret Law. In Korea, wiretapping without warrant is approved is awful indeed, but I think Japanese wiretapping law is not better than Korean because it violate privacy. In fact, Japanese police has been doing illegal wiretapping to get information about anti-government groups. The wiretapping law this time aims to give permission for such wiretapping and we regard this law as an excuse to get official money for wiretapping, research and development of wiretapping technologies.

Here I'd like to show the problem of the wiretapping law.

First, the secret of communication or the right to privacy is very important right involved in basic human right. We never approve any wiretapping because it injures this basic and sublime right.

Second, Japanese wiretapping law is said to have strong restriction compared to Korean law, but we are really doubtful whether those restrictions works. For example, Japanese wiretapping law permits only wiretapping concerning "drag", "gun", "group stowing", "organizational murder". However, the law permits wiretapping to prevent possible crime in future and wiretapping on a separate suspicion. Those shows us that the law is not restrict to only those four crimes. Third, the law requests to have the presence of observer from third party. However, the observer watches only installation of wiretapping devices and formalities of the procedure. The observer is not able to check whether the contents of ongoing wiretapping is legal or not.

Fourth, the fact of wiretapping is given to the target person, but the information is not given to the person who was speaking with the target person. It means, there is no way to know whether I was wiretapped or not if I'm not the target.

Fifth, Japanese court, just like as Korean court, issues a warrant when it is requested almost freely. One serving judge claimed that more than 99.9% of the request for warrant are approved.

Sixth, there are no examination on the tapping of the Internet. It means, even completely irrelevant communication could tapped by police.

Seventh, there are room to alter the tapping record by police.

Eighth, there are fear that the activity of NGO or journalists could restricted.

Not only above, there are many problems on the law. However, the wiretapping is, so long as the wiretapping is secret in its nature, very much unclear and non democratic technic of investigation. Even in some serving police and prosecutor say that the crime that is not captured will not captured even if they taps. Add to this, criminals are using cipher technology recently, so it's no use to tapping if police want to capture criminals of really huge criminal group. From those reason, some NGO say that the wiretapping bill is not to capture criminals but, in fact, to watch over people by police.

However, fortunately, we can use cipher technology in Japan while not in Korea. There are cipher software such as PGP in US to prevent from tapping. We promote to use PGP and other cipher software in order to deprive power from wiretapping. We can get security software as open source, so JCA-NET offers our users to use SSH, PGP and other various security/cipher technology to assure user's safetiness of communication. We also have workshop how to use those security software.

Our final goal is, however, not to use cipher software, but to discard the wiretapping bill. NGOs that have been opposed to the wiretapping law begin to move toward the discarding the law with the members of assembly, journalists and lawyers.

For this, "the sence of privacy" is the most important thing, we think. Japanese people's sence of privacy is not so good. "I don't talk anything illegal", "I will accept because it's needed for police" ... we hear often something like this. Progress of digital technology drives our privacy into dangerous place. I believe that only the awareness of privacy by ordinary people can discard such an awful wiretapping law. We hope to prevail our campaign on the privacy issue.

Also, Japanese police is old fasioned organization. After WWII Japanese old police structure was dissoluted, but there are many police officer who have still old sence. We have to watch and check what the police is doing.

Moreover, we must take care of not only wiretapping by police, but tapping by private sector. Especially, censorship and surveillance in office and factory is done widely also in Japan, we are strongly against those invasion of worker's privacy.

Korean people continues tough campaign against anti electronic ID card, and successful at last. We will continue our struggle until last like Korean activists.