Japan Press Weekly

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2013 November 6 - 12 TOP3 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Nuclear industry workers may also be spied on

The government is intending to carry out background checks on nuclear facility workers in association with a “secrets protection law”, enlarging the possibility of further concealing nuclear-related information by having them, their family members, and friends under surveillance.

This was revealed in the minutes taken of a meeting held by a Nuclear Regulation Authority expert panel regarding nuclear security. The panel proposed that the government introduce a system to authorize security police to gather personal information of nuclear-industry contract workers to verify their trustworthiness.

The system, as a matter of fact, has already come up for discussion when the U.S. Department of Energy demanded that Japan employ it as a counterterrorism measure.

According to a U.S. classified telegram dated February 26, 2007 which Wikileaks posted on the Internet in May 2011, the then Japanese government answered that background checks are constitutionally difficult to do but “unofficially” possible.

The telegram reads: “MEXT (ministry of science and technology) also responded to U.S. urgings to require pre-employment background investigations of all workers with access to sensitive areas at nuclear facilities. They noted that while some NPP (nuclear power plant) operators voluntarily conduct such background checks on their own employees, requiring background investigations of all contractor personnel with access to NPPs would be very difficult. They added that the GOJ (government of Japan) is constitutionally prevented from mandating such checks and wishes to avoid raising what is a deeply sensitive privacy issue for Japanese society. However, MEXT did admit that GOJ background investigations may be going on ‘unofficially’.”

The planned secrets protection law will empower state authorities to carry out investigations into the private affairs of persons who have access to designated secrets.

If the secrets protection bill which the ruling bloc is trying to begin discussing in the Diet becomes law, the U.S. administration will no doubt pressure Japan, based on the bilateral agreement on atomic energy, into incorporating nuclear-related information in state secrets in the name of antiterrorism. Then, the background investigations, including ideological surveillance, will “openly” be implemented.