Japan's Justice Ministry pushes wiretap, trashing the constitution

[seiji.imai@nuernberg.netsurf.de (Seiji Imai)]

forwarded message from mailing list "fight-censorship-digest"
> ------------------------------
>
> From: gt@twics.com (Gohsuke Takama)
> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 05:42:00 -0700
> Subject: Japan's Justice Ministry pushes wiretap, trashing the constitution
>
> Japan's Justice Ministry pushes wiretap, trashing the constitution
>
> "Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan
> Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other
> forms of expression are guaranteed. 2) No censorship shall be maintained,
> nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated. "
>
> Analyst of Japanese culture might say Japanese has "Tatemae/Hon-ne" double
> standard but it might be more than double. Japanese government often treats
> own constitution as imported cosmetics, not a base of the society and the
> law. On Oct 8, Japan's Justice Ministry announced they are going to propose
> a bill that makes wiretap of communications legal which includes the
> Internet and BBSs as well as telephones, is a slap to the constitution. JM
> stressed it will prevent organized crimes, some may point out incident of a
> religious cult Aum Shinrikyo which blasted nerve gas in Tokyo's subway
> system in March 1995 was a tailwind.
>
> But unlike USA, Freedom Of Information Act isn't here yet for national
> level. If law enforcement abuses wiretapping, here are no monitoring
> entity, no CDT, no EFF, no EPIC, no VTW. Yet another example of how Japan's
> police is creative about interpreting the law appeared one week before JM's
> announce. On Sep 30, Police of Hiroshima filed prosecution on board members
> of local Internet Service Provider "Urban Ecology" contributing to public
> exposure of pornography through their web site, provided by some user. But
> the thing is the user just set links to other site that contains
> pornographic material and it was even not linked to top page of the ISP's.
> This is totally an extensive understanding of current law, critics points
> out. The ISP already manifested against this using their web page
> (http://www.urban.or.jp/ub/uin.html).
>
> Still the timing of JM announce was interesting because it was in the
> middle of Japan's senate election campaign hell, also right after OECD in
> Paris. Why is it now? Setting up key escrow behind smoke screen or
> preparing for the return of fascisms?
>
>
> Gohsuke Takama
>
> ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
> Gohsuke Takama   gt@twics.com
> current location: Tokyo
> ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
> <>Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan<>
> Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press
> and all other forms of expression are guaranteed.
> 2) No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of
> any means of communication be violated.
>
>
> ------------------------------

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