It’s been almost a year since I exposed the Ministry of Justice’s inappropriate practice of placing the names, birthdates, and addresses of foreigners who naturalize as Japanese citizens. So I figured I would check back and see if the MOJ had decided to stop violating the privacy of the citizens it’s supposed to be protecting, and the answer is a big fat NO. As of February 23, the government gazette still publishes the information in the exact same place. It might be hidden from Google searches, but the information is contained on PDFs that can be used to easily copy paste the name and address information and used for God know’s what.
I don’t feel like taking the time right now to compare this practice to the MOJ’s own “personal information protection policy” but is it safe to assume that this kind of blatant disclosure violates the spirit of privacy protection if not the letter of the law?
http://www.transpacificradio.com/pdf/personal-info-law.pdf
There’s an English translation of the personal info law that I use with clients…
Your name and address also become public record if you’re the representative director of a company. No birthdate, although that’s written on your seal certificate so pretty much anyone with whom you’re seriously doing business can see it.
Of course, this doesn’t deter wealthier people, because they either (a) live in a really inconvenient place anyway, or (b) have a dummy residence which they can use as their registered domicile.