Today Japanese law does not provide strong protection to maintain the confidentiality of information concerning individuals, nor does it provide people with an effective legal right to review information in the possession of government concerning themselves. JCLU has lobbied to demand improved legal protection in these areas.
The issue of enabling individuals to review government-held information concerning themselves was raised during deliberations over the Information Disclosure Law. The Administrative Reform Commission Subcommittee on Information Disclosure took the position that this issue should be resolved within a system providing for protection of the privacy of individual information. (See the Subcommittee Commentary (kangaekata).) Accordingly, Japan‘s information disclosure law itself does not provide a right for individuals to inspect information concerning themselves. Moreover, the law provides that individual information is generally exempt from disclosure, thus blocking access even to self-information.
Following Diet passage of the information disclosure law, a government committee was appointed to study protection of individual information and access to self-information. One critical aspect of the work is review of a 1988 law which provides a partial solution. On October 18, 1999, JCLU submitted an opinion letter to this committee (“Committee for the Promotion of an Advanced Information and Communication Society”). The JCLU letter called for fundamental revision of the “Law concerning the Protection of Individual Information in the Possession of Administrative Agencies Processable by Electronic Computers.” JCLU pointed out that this law has the following deficiencies:
The JCLU letter further pointed out that the Administrative Reform Commission itself called for urgent review of this issue due to “strong demand from the People for a right to review information concerning themselves, especially medical and educational information.” The letter also stated that privacy protection had become a matter of great urgency due to recent passage of a law authorizing the use of wiretaps and revision of the Fundamental Residential Registry Law.
The subject of the proposed law to protect information concerning individuals in the possession of private organizations was taken up at a regular meeting of the JCLU membership held on July 25, 2000. The discussion focused on the “Proposed Outline concerning a Fundamental Law Protecting Individual Information” (“Outline”) released by the government the preceding month. In his introduction, Representative Director Mikio Akiyama stated that “the intent of a law to protect individual information is to realize `respect for the individual` but a side effect is a restriction on the `right to know,` so the issue must be carefully evaluated.” JCLU Director Hiroshi Miyake said that the need for a law protecting individual information was recognized in the course of the debate over the information disclosure law. He stressed that, to the extent that an disclosure system seeks to protect privacy, it must allow review of information by individuals concerning themselves.
The Outline proposed that government agencies and private organizations be subject to the same set of rules. Miyake pointed out that application of the same standards regarding information archiving and disclosure to private organizations would constitute an obstacle to the operations of NGOs and citizens groups. He suggested that rules applicable to government agencies and to non-governmental organizations should be considered separately. He also recommended that the new law should follow the eight principles enunciated by the OECD Board of Directors.
Next, JCLU Director Kenta Yamada made a presentation regarding the potential impact on freedom of expression. Yamada called for excluding information gathered by media organizations during the process of reporting from the scope of the law. Failure to do so would potentially have a chilling effect on reporting as it might pose a threat to the confidentiality of information sources.
Yamada also put forth the suggestion that information in the possession of media organizations could be segregated between information gathered through reporting activities on one hand, from information gathered for marketing purposes on the other (such as information concerning subscribers, subscription fees, etc.).
On August 25, 2000, JCLU formally delivered its written opinion concerning the Outline to the government‘s “Specialist Committee on a Legal System to Protect Individual Information.”
The JCLU opinion stressed four main points: