Blogaria

"If you're planning to visit Japan sometime in the near future, you should be aware of the welcome you'll get. Last year, Japan's parliament passed a measure requiring foreigners to submit their fingerprints when entering the country. The measures, which apply to all foreigners over 16 regardless of visa status, take effect tomorrow. The worst part: the fingerprints are stored in a national database for an "unspecified time", and will be made available to both domestic police and foreign governments."

There goes the personal privacy again. Thanks to such measures, we're forced to place an implicit trust in organisations or countries that we don't really know. Also we're forced to extend this trust into the future, since Japan will store the fingerprints "for an unspecified time". And what's even scarier, we're forced to trust the Japanese authorities "by proxy". We have no idea who the "foreign governments" are that Japan is willing to share the data with.

I wrote earlier about a similar idea of the European Union, concerning storing flight movement data. That idea didn't make sense to me, and neither do the Japanese plans. I still think that

• The "ownership" of my personal data lies with me, unless proven otherwise.
• No-one should be forcing me to trust anyone for an unspecified time. You might ask me to trust you now, but you can't expect me to state that I'll be trusting you in ten years!
• In the end, such measures will make no sense at all, they simply won't be effective. Not even historical data indicate that this measure should help: no terrorist attack in Japan ever was committed by foreigners.

Trust by proxy in a time warp, what a bitch.