Japan Press Weekly

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2024 September 25 - October 1 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Court rules police practice of maintaining innocent people’s personal data as unconstitutional

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The Nagoya High Court on August 30 ruled the police act of maintaining personal data of a man, who won acquittal in his criminal case, as a violation of the Constitution, and ordered the National Police Agency to remove the fingerprint, DNA, and mug shot data of the man from its database.

The man had been accused of pushing the supervisor at the construction site of a high-rise condominium near his home during a nearby residents’ protest against the construction. He, however, was acquitted in a criminal trial. He then filed a civil lawsuit demanding the removal of his personal data from the police database.

The high court ruling pointed out that the continued storage by the police of DNA and other personal data of people with finalized not-guilty verdicts infringes on their moral right guaranteed under Article 13 of the Constitution stipulating respect to individual dignity. The court also pointed out that the storing of personal data in the police database has chilling effects on the activities of individuals, violating the public interest and rights. The police should abide by the high court order.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has been stressing the need to introduce new rules regarding investigative data in order to protect individuals’ right to privacy and self-information control. It has also been calling for measures that will oblige the police to delete personal data of persons who are not charged or convicted of a crime; allow the police to collect DNA data only when they need to do so in a specific criminal investigation; and ban the use of the collected data for other purposes.

The Japanese Communist Party took up the issue in the Diet. JCP member of the House of Councilors Tamura Tomoko in 2021 at a Diet meeting pointed out that the police act of retaining personal information of people who are acquitted or not prosecuted is tantamount to categorizing them as suspects permanently, which is unacceptable in a democratic society. She pointed to the importance of creating a legal framework to protect against any infringement of the right to privacy and provide remedies to victims.