E-mails will be monitored by police under wiretap law -- Akahata editorial,
August 25, 2001 (excerpts)

A year has passed since the wiretapping law came into effect in August
2000, and police are now working on a plan to develop an exclusive system
for monitoring all e-mails without having to access Internet providers.

This concept, tentatively called an "assumed mail box," suggests that
the police are abusing the wiretapping law to violate the privacy of
communication by citizens.

All e-mails will be exposed to the police if this system is developed
and used. There is no guarantee that police monitoring is restricted to
those e-mails which the police requested warrants for monitoring in
connection with criminal investigations.

It is most likely that the police will endlessly abuse this "convenient"
weapon against citizens.

In the U.S. with a similar law, about 1,300 permits for police to
monitor are issued every year. About 2,100 conversations are wiretapped on
each warrant, but 80 percent of monitored conversations turned out to have
nothing to do with a crime.

E-mail communication is part of today's social life for people of all
ages. A democracy with a constitutional guarantee of the privacy of
communication must not tolerate this right being violated.

The way to stop this police outrage is to abolish the law by developing
public opinion and movement against it. (end)