Upper house committee passes personal information bills

Ignoring protests by the opposition parties and citizen groups, the House of Councilors special committee on May 21 passed a set of "privacy protection" bills.

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Hatta Hiroko criticized the government for taking no measures to meet such serious defects of the bills such as disclosure of personal information for recruiting young people for the Self-Defense Forces or police information being free from the bills leaving room for its abuse.

Hatta also stated that the system of allowing the minister-in-charge to distinguish whether a piece of information serves "press purposes or not" should be withdrawn, and a neutral third party organization needs to exist in order to avoid possible administrative intervention.

The opposition parties jointly submitted an amendment to the government bills, but it was rejected.

A supplementary resolution was unanimously adopted to the effect that three years later, necessary steps will be taken to amend the government bills.

In the committee meeting on the same day, JCP Miyamoto Takeshi exposed a cross flow of secret information between the police and major loan shark Takefuji. Showing a chart of the flow of personal criminal information on debtors from the police and a list telling policemen who are borrowing from Takefuji.

On the previous day, writer Shiroyama Saburo, representatives from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and the Japan Magazine Publishers Association spoke in the committee and raised an objection to the government bills. (end)