Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Concerned Japanese citizens on Sunday demonstrated in front of the new headquarters of Japan’s Digital Agency in Tokyo, which has been charged with speeding up the digitization of Japanese society.

The new Japanese government and its new Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio have advocated for a “digital society that leaves no one behind” and this was confirmed by the Prime Minister in his general policy speech during his inauguration.

Opponents of the scheme believe its initiatives could lead to an invasion of people’s privacy.  They have denounced the centralization of citizens’ data held by local governments and private companies. Activists have raised the possibility of conflicts of interest in making data accessible to the private sector.

With general use of the “My Number” social insurance identification card coming into effect from Oct. 20, information from various sources will be concentrated. The demonstrators expressed concern about potential leaks of personal information. The Basic Law on Computing was greatly modified in May 2021 and its opponents fear misuse of information.

Protesters stressed in their leaflets that it should not be necessary to use the personal number assigned by the government and that there were legal remedies to refuse its use. One of the demonstrators pointed out that some older people are unfamiliar with digital use, while another feared a data leak and wished to have control over his own personal information.