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Reporters Without Borders
Japan

Source:  http://rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=7239
Or:      http://rsf.fr/print.php3?id_article=7239

18.06.2003

The huge success of the Internet, especially via mobile phones, has been spoiled by disclosure of the country's participation in the US electronic spying network Echelon and by creation of software to intercept e-mails.



The Japanese, famously passionate about communications, gadgets and digital technology, enthusiastically took to the Internet early on. As well as subscriptions to ISPs, cybercafés are everywhere and the arrival of i-mode, launched by Do Co Mo, a subsidiary of the big Japanese mobile phone company NTT, has started a new way of surfing the Web.

I-mode is the first successful link-up between mobile phones and the Internet, allowing phone calls, watching high-definition videos, listening to MP3 music and accessing a range of Internet services. Between 15 and 20 million people, mostly young people between 15 and 34, have taken to it.

Ironically, the country is not as advanced as other rich countries when it comes to speedy connections in homes and government offices, notably the education ministry. In March 2001, the government unveiled a catch-up plan called "e-Japan strategy" to build an infrastructure over five years giving 30 million Japanese homes high-speed Internet access and 10 million others very high-speed access.

Both accomplice and victim of spying

Japan was rocked in 2001 by the revelation that the government was taking part in the electronic spy network Echelon set up by the US National Security Agency. The network's giant dishes, monitoring and interception centres at strategic points around the globe (the US, Britain, New Zealand, Japan and elsewhere), can pick up, sort out and analyse traffic sent via fixed-line and mobile phones, satellite, optic-fibre lines and microwaves.

The scandal broke on 20 June, when a delegation of several NGOs, led by the Networkers against Surveillance Taskforce (NaST) which has campaigned since 1997 against generalised surveillance through new communications technology, formally asked parliament to clarify Japan's role in the Echelon network. Japan had allowed the US to build a monitoring centre at its military base at Misawa, in northern Honshu island, but was Japan itself was a victim of this spying, as senior finance and foreign trade ministry officials repeatedly insist.

The daily paper Mainichi Shimbun, found some answers. It reported on 26 June that New Zealand was the key ally of US spying on Japan through Echelon. This was backed up by Duncan Campbell, an expert with the investigation into Echelon set up by the European Parliament. He cited examples of US spying on Japan during Japanese trade negotiations.

The Japanese government was especially embarrassed by the revelations because they were accused of complicity. As well as participating in Echelon, the government has built up its own monitoring capacity. The magazine ZDnet quoted a Japanese military source as saying Japan had equipped a fleet of five EP-3 planes with electronic interception and monitoring equipment. The data gathered is processed at the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese Defence Agency, it said.

Parliament voted in March 2001 to spend more than a million dollars to create an e-mail monitoring software called "Kari-no-mail." It was ready by the end of that year and is reportedly being installed on the country's ISPs. But Japanese security officials have never told the politicians exactly how far things have gone. Freedom of expression and civil liberties organisations are demanding openness about it and demanding that use of the software be stopped.

Links :

  *  About the Echelon network:  http://www.echelonwatch.org/

  *  Networkers against Surveillance Taskforce (in Japanese):  http://www.jca.ax.apc.org/privacy

  *  DoCoMo, inventor of the "i-mode":  http://www.nttdocomo.com/top.html

  *  Details of the "e-Japan strategy":  http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/it/network/0122full_e.html

  *  The Asian edition of Zdnet:  http://www.zdnetasia.com/


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