April 9, 2019

The Kyoto City government on April 8 provided Self-Defense Force recruiters with information of citizens who become 18 or 22 years of age this fiscal year without gaining their consent.

The city authority waited to give the SDF the personal data until the day after the voting day for the first round of nationwide local elections possibly because it wanted to prevent this matter from becoming a major election issue.

The information passed on to the SDF Kyoto Provincial Cooperation Office concerned more than 26,600 Kyoto citizens who are either at the age of 18 or at the age of 22, normally the graduation ages for high schools and colleges. The local administration reportedly handed to the SDF recruiting office direct-mail labels with their names and addresses printed on.

The city was initially planning to submit the labels to the SDF much earlier but postponed the issuance because of fierce public criticism of the provision of personal information without consent.

Lawyer Fukuyama Kazuhito of the Kyoto Law Office said, "The Kyoto City government changed its policy so that the names of persons who had expressed their refusal to have their data known to the SDF were excluded from the mailing labels. The municipal office, however, should have confirmed all the targeted young people's willingness to have their names and addresses disclosed to the SDF recruiters."

Fukuyama also said, "No matter how many times I asked, the city administration did not respond to the question regarding the date it would give the SDF the data. Then, it suddenly handed over the data to the SDF right after the election. To have diverted voters' attention away from this matter is arrogantly unethical."

Past related articles:
> Young Kyoto residents to city government: Don’t provide our personal information to SDF [January 29, 2019]
> Rally held to oppose Kyoto City’s move to provide personal data to SDF [December 14, 2018]