Japan Press Weekly

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2013 May 8 - 14 [POLITICS]

ID number bill passed through Lower House

A bill to assign an ID number to every citizen in order to manage their tax payments and social welfare benefits was passed through the Lower House and sent to the Upper House on May 9. The Japanese Communist, People’s Life, and Social Democratic parties voted against it.

The JCP has opposed the ID number system by stressing that authorities could use the system as a tool to cut social security benefits and strengthen tax collection under the name of “benefits according to recipients’ ability to pay.”

It has also pointed out in Diet discussions that to install a system to collate personal information under one rigid number may lead to frequent violations of privacy and identity thefts. The JCP has criticized the government for failing to present specific advantages or cost-benefit analyses of the system while estimating the cost for the installment of the system at 300 billion yen.

Although the government has insisted that to limit the areas in which the system can be applied could prevent abuses and crimes, the bill indicates that expansion of the fields to be covered by the system to the private sector will be considered in three years.

The government claims that the ID number system will help promote efficiency of administrative tasks. However, as JCP House of Representatives member Akamine Seiken revealed during Diet discussions, the system is expected to be effective for improvement of only 0.01% of such work.

On the same day, citizens’ groups held a press conference at the Diet building and called for the bill to be scrapped.

Criticizing the hasty and sloppy deliberations at the Lower House by the Liberal Democratic, Komei, Democratic, Japan Restoration, and People’s New parties, they urged the Upper House to have careful and thorough discussions on the bill.

The Japan Federation of Commercial Broadcast Workers’ Unions published a statement on the same day, demanding that the bill be scrapped.

Past related articles:
> Diet debate begins on bill to implement national ID system (March 23, 2013)
> Gov’t attempting to introduce ID number system (July 30, 2012)