March 19, 2025

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Shiokawa Tetsuya on March 18 at a House of Representatives plenary meeting criticized a bill on active cyber defense for violating the constitutionally guaranteed secrecy of communication and the right to privacy. He also criticized the bill for opening the door to allow for a preemptive cyberattack prohibited under international law.

The discussion on the bill began in the Diet on the day.

Shiokawa said that the bill allows the government to collect online communication information without consent, which violates the secrecy of communications and the right to privacy guaranteed under the Constitution. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru in reply justified the bill by saying, “It is inevitable due to a high public interest in preventing cyberattacks.”

Shiokawa noted that the bill enables the police and the Self-Defense Forces to infiltrate, monitor, and neutralize suspected cyberattack-sources without court warrants. He warned that if this measure is taken against servers in foreign countries, this will be an infringement of national sovereignty and thus may be deemed to be an “illegal preemptive attack.”

Shiokawa pointed out that the bill stipulates that the SDF will protect the U.S. forces in Japan from enemy cyberattacks, and said, “It is the U.S. military which determines whether it is hit by such an attack. This means that in effective, the SDF will be used to launch a cybersecurity attack under U.S. military command.”