more on (2) revolution in Japan

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Jo's reply follows in second note djf


------ Forwarded Message
From: IKEDA Nobuo <ikeda-nobuo () rieti go jp>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 20:58:40 +0900
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ikedanob () db3 so-net ne jp
Subject: Re: [IP] revolution in Japan

I can't understand what Jo Ito means by "revolution", but I am afraid
that he is preventing the evolution of the Internet in Japan. Yesterday
we had a symposium titled "E-Governmet for Whom?"

http://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/events/03020501/info.html (in Japanese)

We discussed the National ID problem, to which Ito is opposing strongly.
His colleague is arguing "I don't want to be a number". We concluded
that it was a non-probelm whether people become numbers or not, because
they are already numbered and could be searched by their names and
addresses. Try Google.

Ito insists that Japanese govt should strengthen the privacy bill to
enforce "self-information control rights" to allow everybody to control
all data that contain his/her name. In our symposium, we agreed that it
was very dangerous to empower everybody to "censor" the personal data.
Even the notorious EU directive is not enforcing such a strong
restriction.

Yesterday I discussed it with a Microsoft official, and today I talked
about it with an Intel official. They encouraged me to stop such a
dangerous "privacy" bill that regulates the Net.

--
Ikeda, Nobuo
Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/


------ End of Forwarded Message


------ Forwarded Message
From: Joichi Ito <jito () neoteny com>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 23:38:21 +0900
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] revolution in Japan


On Thursday, Feb 6, 2003, at 21:04 Asia/Tokyo, David Farber wrote:

> If any response send to me  and I will attach to this for ip
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IKEDA Nobuo <ikeda-nobuo () rieti go jp>
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> CC: ikedanob () db3 so-net ne jp
> Subject: Re: [IP] revolution in Japan
> Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 20:58:40 +0900
>
> I can't understand what Jo Ito means by "revolution", but I am afraid
> that he is preventing the evolution of the Internet in Japan. Yesterday
> we had a symposium titled "E-Governmet for Whom?"

I don't think anyone other than Ikeda-san thinks I'm am preventing the
evolution of the Internet so I won't address this point directly. If he
would elaborate, I will happily defend my position.

> http://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/events/03020501/info.html (in Japanese)
>
> We discussed the National ID problem, to which Ito is opposing
> strongly.
> His colleague is arguing "I don't want to be a number". We concluded
> that it was a non-probelm whether people become numbers or not, because
> they are already numbered and could be searched by their names and
> addresses. Try Google.

Universal numbers are more dangerous than name/address combinations.
Anyone trying to merge databases knows that it is very difficult and
much more expensive to merge databases that don't have unique serial
numbers. Google is useful, but there is very little information about
me on Google that I have not made explicitly available. The government
has ID information of whistle blowers, FOIA requesters, people who
subscribe to subversive newsletters, face recognition data for
blacklists for a variety of government agencies and arrest records
(including people who were not charged). This information is often
leaked. A universal numbering system will make it much easier for this
information to be abused. The numbering system has been passed without
clear guidelines about the government use of personal information.
Also, privacy enhancing technologies and better architecture could have
significantly reduced the risk of personal information being leaked by
the government, but such suggestions were ignored and the system set up
before thorough public debate. For instance, since the ID cards will be
smart cards, why were 11 digit human readable numbers chosen instead of
longer non-human readable numbers? Why were static numbers chosen
instead of some sort of session key based authentication system?

> Ito insists that Japanese govt should strengthen the privacy bill to
> enforce "self-information control rights" to allow everybody to control
> all data that contain his/her name. In our symposium, we agreed that it
> was very dangerous to empower everybody to "censor" the personal data.
> Even the notorious EU directive is not enforcing such a strong
> restriction.

I would like to clarify that I think that the privacy bill regulating
non-government entities is fine or in some ways too strong. My primary
issue with the privacy bill is that it has much weaker restrictions on
the use and cross-referencing of personal information by the
government. There is no watch-dog organization which oversees privacy
violations by the government, the bill is VERY loose about the
government's use of personal information. The Japanese government in
notoriously abusive of information about individuals.

> Yesterday I discussed it with a Microsoft official, and today I talked
> about it with an Intel official. They encouraged me to stop such a
> dangerous "privacy" bill that regulates the Net.

Again, I think that self-regulation and disclosure of privacy policies
by commercial enterprises is sufficient. My main concern is the abuse
by the government. The government watches us, but who watches them?

> --
> Ikeda, Nobuo
> Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry
> http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/
> -- Dave
--
Blog http://joi.ito.com/
Blog JP: http://joi.ito.com/jp/


------ End of Forwarded Message

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