March 23, 2013

Discussions on a bill to mandate that all individuals living in Japan have a personal identification number began in the House of Representatives on March 22, amid concern over a high risk of personal information being leaked or used for crime.

Japanese Communist Party representative Akamine Seiken at the House plenary session expressed his opposition to the introduction of this identification system by arguing, “Embedding so much private information in one ID number will increase the risk of private information leakage.”

Akamine presented the example of the United States where damage caused by ID theft amounted to 50 billion U.S. dollars affecting 10 million people in just two years.

He added that Germany restricts the numbering system only to the field of taxes and Austria adopts different numbers in different administrative bodies as a measure to prevent leakage of private information.

In response, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo could not delineate effective preventive measures. He referred only to the need to “limit range of use of the ID or monitor and supervise the information using an independent agency.”

Amari Akira, state minister in charge of administrative reform, made clear that the government is considering expanding the use of the information by the private sector in three years after an ID number law comes into force. He also stated that the introduction of such a system will cost 200-300 billion yen.

The JCP representative warned of possible inappropriate use of the system if the government grants private enterprises access to the information as requested by the business community.

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During the last four years in South Korea, private information of about 120 million people has been released. Neither tougher penalties nor improvements to the system have so far shown to be effective in protecting individual privacy there.

In the United States, with the rampant ID theft problem, some departments and agencies have embarked on employing a number system differing from category to category as does Japan at present.