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Japan Privacy

Japan Steps Up Push To Get Public Buy-in To Digital IDs (apnews.com) 56

Posted by msmash from the my-way-or-highway dept.
Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance. From a report: As the naming implies, the initiative is about assigning numbers to people, similar to Social Security numbers in the U.S. Many Japanese worry the information might be misused or that their personal information might be stolen. Some view the My Number effort as a violation of their right to privacy. So the system that kicked off in 2016 has never fully caught on. Fax machines are still commonplace, and many Japanese conduct much of their business in person, with cash. Some bureaucratic procedures can be done online, but many Japanese offices still require "inkan," or seals for stamping, for identification, and insist on people bringing paper forms to offices.

Now the government is asking people to apply for plastic My Number cards equipped with microchips and photos, to be linked to drivers licenses and the public health insurance plans. Health insurance cards now in use, which lack photos, will be discontinued in late 2024. People will be required to use My Number cards instead. That has drawn a backlash, with an online petition demanding a continuation of the current health cards drawing more than 100,000 signatures in a few days.
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Japan Steps Up Push To Get Public Buy-in To Digital IDs More

Japan Steps Up Push To Get Public Buy-in To Digital IDs

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  • mark of the beast with 1984 level tracking

    • Jesus will be here to battle the antichrist ANY day now!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nonsense. You can track people much, much easier by using other characteristics. These numbers are about making bureaucracy more efficient, nothing else. You just have no clue how things actually work and hence are barking up entirely the wrong tree.

  • This, or requiring everyone to give the government their original "digital IDs" aka fingerprints.

  • If your product is so bad that you have to extort people into using it, cancel the product. If you work for the government, you should be fired for suggesting this.

    Also, it may not be common knowledge, but it is pretty easy to sabotage these kinds of cards. Shine a light through any chipped card (credit card for example) and you can see the hidden wires. Drill a tiny hole half way through the card where the wire is and cover it with a bit of nail polish of the appropriate color. The chip no longer work

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by larwe ( 858929 )
      The wires to which you refer are the RFID/MFID antenna loop for cards so enabled (which certainly is most of them these days), not part of the chip per se. If you break that loop the card will no longer be tappable, but the ISO7816 contacts will still work as normal if the card is inserted into a reader. If you look at the _back_ of an ISO7816 card directly behind the contacts you will see a depression or other kind of large dimple in the card's surface - underneath that is the chip itself (COB'd to the bac

      • You are what I call "irrelevantly correct". Everything you said is entirely true, and you are very knowledgeable. I am impressed. But people complaining about the chips are not objecting to the database - those existed before the chips and are much harder to deny access. Do business with anyone and they have the right to remember what you did.

        But the RFID antennas are a whole separate issue. That can let people get your information without you realizing it. They sell souped up readers that can have 30

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by larwe ( 858929 )
          If your _sole_ worry is remote reading of RFID tokens on your person, then you are exactly the kind of person who needs a Faraday cage wallet. Which, actually, almost every wallet I see these days is shielded (I guess it's cheap to add). That way you won't be an exception case when you get to the front of whatever line you're in and your card doesn't work right.

          • If your _sole_ worry is remote reading of RFID tokens on your person, then you are exactly the kind of person who needs a Faraday cage wallet.

            Yep. Or keep your card in a shielded sleeve.

            Or even wrap it in aluminum foil.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by larwe ( 858929 )
                For a document not routinely carried (like a passport), that's true (if nuanced). For a document like a driver's license or credit card, that's kept in the wallet at all times, less true - data can be harvested in bulk anywhere people congregate en masse - train stations and the like being the usual examples. Many countries with a government-issued ID card make it compulsory to carry that card, to be produced on demand.
                • Comment removed based on user account deletion

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by larwe ( 858929 )
                    Oh. I didn't get your exact line of argument there, thanks for clarifying. But there are "good" reasons for using contactless. One of them is equipment reliability; smartcard sockets wear out. I'm sure you've been at a gas station or similar high-transaction-volume checkout where there's been a bit of paper stuffed into the reader to press the inserted card more firmly against the (bent, corroded) contacts. Cards get damaged by friction and by ESD. According to the payment card processors, tap to pay is als

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by larwe ( 858929 )
          Oh, and if we're talking "irrelevancy" - from the very original post "the initiative is about assigning numbers to people" [and tying databases together]. The possibility of a remote card read attack was not even mentioned. The public is (IMHO justifiably) up in arms about the _backend_ loss of privacy due to the mandated use of a digital ID that is linked to all those backend DBs.

    • If your product is so bad that you have to extort people into using it, cancel the product. If you work for the government, you should be fired for suggesting this.

      Most governments across the world are pretty arrogant, though. Without exception. The vast majority has a governing class... not just politicians and the rich, but also the administrative class in the government... and their attitude is "The rubes will do what they're told, or else". You can apply this to just about any Alphabet Agency here in the US as well, from the FBI right down to the USDA.

    • If your product is so bad that you have to extort people into using it, cancel the product.

      Have you ever been through a system migration? Idiots running ancient versions of Red Hat on ancient hardware will kick and scream and refuse to migrate because they "don't have time". They continue like this until not only is the software not supported but the hardware isn't even manufactured anymore so used parts costing ungodly sums have to be purchased while production goes offline. Is there anything wrong with the new hardware or software? No really, it just required more effort than zero and "what's

    • Not really. Two human resources pay heavily into this:
      1. People hate change. Especially change from a long established system in which they can't see a problem.
      2. People rarely vote for their collective benefit.

      People generally have resisted every move to digitisation in every country by every government all over the world. Despite the fact that in most cases it would be for their benefit.

      Just look at the pedestrianisation of shipping strips. Shop keepers are the most vocally against it with claims they wil

  • Provided you trust your government to actually be capable and willing of using it for your benefit.

    Guess why people are opposed to it. Hint: If you treat your citizens like subjects, don't expect them to cooperate with you more than they absolutely have to. Treat people like people and you'll be amazed just how much you can ask from them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by larwe ( 858929 )
      Factually, in the US it really doesn't matter from a privacy perspective - because the damage is already done. So, floating conspiracy theories about how government digital IDs will erode privacy is pointless - all those civil liberties and privacies have already been lost because the US has never had strong protections for personal data, and there are data brokers everywhere who have already tied everything together in such a way that any malign activity you care to imagine (data-wise) is already easily ac
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Tell them the alternative is American style health insurance, that will get them onboard.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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