Japan Press Weekly

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2011 February 23 - March 1 [POLITICS]

Libraries worldwide prohibited from disclosing users’ info

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on February 24 submitted to the Diet a report expressing sincere remorse over having MOFA officials tip the ministry off about what materials Dietmembers were looking at in the National Diet Library (NDL).

Their act of espionage on domestic parliamentarians came to light in declassified diplomatic documents released on February 18.

According to the MOFA report, the Foreign Policy, Asian and Oceanian, North American, and European and Oceanic affairs bureaus were sharing the information about legislators, especially in regard to Japanese Communist Party congressmen, collected in the NDL by MOFA agents.

Yanbe Atsuo, chairman of the Japan Library Association (JLA) committee on freedom of libraries, criticized the spying by administrative organs as threatening the existence of libraries as nonpartisan entities.

The JLA in 1979 declared that users’ use of reference materials is protected by the right to privacy and thus all library employees must honor the right to privacy.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in its 1999 statement also prohibits library-related staff from leaking users’ IDs and information regarding their reading materials to a third party.

Yanbe stated that it is an internationally accepted principle to protect the right to privacy of users.