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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.
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