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Vol.24 Personal Information
Protection Law. |
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Six years have passed
since the Personal Information
Protection Law went into effect
in April 2005. The gist of this
legislation is that it is
obligatory for businesses which
hold personal information of
more than 5,000 individuals to
have an information management
system in place. What concerned
me at the time, however, was
that society overreacted to this
legislation. Below are some
examples.
Example 1)
A general hospital apparently started using numbers instead of names to
call their patients at the
reception. Everybody knows that
the vast majority of patients at
hospitals are elderly people.
With so many of them having
insufficient sight and hearing,
calling them using numbers
causes inconvenience in various
ways and may even lead to
accidents.
Example 2)
A municipal government stopped providing a name list of single mother
households for the social
workers. They explained that it
was because they received a
number of complaints from the
mothers asking why someone who
is not even from the municipal
government was coming to visit.
However, social workers come
hand in hand with child welfare
volunteers and are designated by
both the minister and governor.
It is a legal requirement to
take care of single mother
households. Social workers
commented, “We cannot do our job
without the name list, as many
single mother households have no
nameplates by their front door.”
Who do you think is more reasonable?
I personally think that the government staff just backed away fearing more
complaints, ignoring the system
that is meant to support single
mother households. As you know,
there are benefits paid to
single mother households.
However, I hear that there are
many households which misuse
this system and illegally
receive these benefits. As the
social workers can function as a
checker, the municipal
government’s handling of this
matter can be said to be
preposterous.
People have names in order to differentiate themselves from others. I
don’t think it would make the
world any better by disguising
names with numbers or concealing
them. If we don’t put a stop to
the misuse of privacy rights
soon, our society may turn into
an extremely inconvenient place
fraught with friction.
End.
(Written by Masaru Sugaya)
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