The Japanese government passed a law today that will affect me, most of my friends, and over 6 million other gaijin.
Foreigners visiting Japan will be photographed and fingerprinted on entry, including those living here, who will be photographed and fingerprinted upon any re-entry to Japan.
Of course, it’s done in the name of anti-terrorism, safety and national security. Since the US has been doing this same thing to its foreign visitors since 2004, Japan was bound to follow. Wasn’t it?
No date has been set to begin this procedure. Perhaps some of the groups that have protested can create a diversion before the government can pass the budget and schedule portions of the legislation. But that seems doubtful. This snippet from the Asahi Shimbun does not promise much good:
Meanwhile, Gayle S. Nix, a senior official at the U.S. firm Accenture, said little information is available on known terrorists and that border-control data ought to be shared among nations in the future.
She said resistance to governments holding personal data such as fingerprints will likely ease over time.
Accenture also developed the fingerprint data-management system that the U.S. government adopted in 2004 to track all foreign nationals entering the United States.
Accenture won a bid from Japan last fall to develop an experimental immigration tracking system that includes integrated-circuit chip embedded cards capable of storing the fingerprint data of the holder.
The IC-card system will be used once the fingerprinting requirement legislation is passed.
Won’t be long before we’re all so comfy with governments “holding personal data”, that we’ll eagerly line up for our free, legislated RFID tags so our every move can processed to prove we’re Good Citizens.
Stop this world! Let me off. What to do? What to do? Get off the grid. Start my own nation. Stop moving about in the world… I don’t know how.
