[Ecommerce] privacy bill

[Takeshi Muramoto]

>From Yomiuri Shimbun, January 25, 2003

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm



Privacy bill sets harsher penalties



Government employees could be sentenced to up to two years in prison or
fined up to 1 million yen for violating an envisaged law aimed at protecting
the confidentiality of personal information held by the state, government
sources said Thursday.

The bill to be submitted by the government to the current Diet session in
mid-February would impose even harsher penalties on officials who unlawfully
provide lists of individuals and other personal information from government
files to third parties.

The bill also provides for sentences of up to one year imprisonment and
fines of up to 500,000 yen for government workers who collect personal
information for purposes unrelated to their duties. This represents an
effort to prevent irregularities similar to the information-seeker list
scandal that rocked the Defense Agency in May.

The extraordinary Diet session convened last autumn scrapped a similar bill.
The government is applying the finishing touches to the new bill, which it
plans to present to the current Diet session.

The bill would cover employees at administrative institutions and
corporations commissioned by government organs to handle personal
information.

In March 2002, the government submitted to the Diet an initial bill on the
confidentiality of personal information possessed by government offices. The
bill did not include penalties for government employee who provided personal
information to a third party or gathered personal data for purposes
unrelated to their duties.

At the time, the government defended the bill on the grounds that government
workers are legally required to protect the confidentiality of information
obtained in connection with their duties and therefore the confidentiality
of such information was ensured under the National Civil Service Law and the
Criminal Code.

In May 2002, however, it was found that Defense Agency officials had
produced files on a list of individuals and private organizations that had
sought Defense Agency and Self-Defense Forces documents under the Freedom of
Information Law. The officials involved were punished under the Self-Defense
Forces Law.



Takeshi Muramoto