The backlash against immigrants in Japan may have reached its most ridiculous height this week. And that’s saying something.
I wrote earlier this week on our social media platforms about the surprise announcement from Mie Prefecture, which says it will “consider” revising its policies around hiring foreign workers in government. Currently, Mie is one of 12 prefectures in Japan that has eliminated citizenship requirements for most government worker positions. (Some sensitive positions still require you have a family registry.)
Mie says the move is to “protect the information security” of its residents. The fear is that some nefarious foreigner who’s actually an agent of a foreign government could use their access to leak the home address of a 57-year-old ojisan in Yokkaichi and send him pro-solar panel propaganda, I guess.
This announcement is silly for two reasons. The first is that, currently, Mie Prefecture has one – yes, one – non-Japanese worker. That means the net effect of this bill will be that some innocent person who was minding their own business loses their job.
The other silly thing is that Japan doesn’t need to fear that foreigners will steal its citizens’ personal information. As news headlines show, Japanese people are fully capable of mishandling sensitive data by themselves, thank you very much!
“I’ll just put these My Numbers on a USB drive and take them home with me. What could possibly go wrong?!”
Despite its international reputation for “living in the future,” Japan can often be surprisingly low-tech. Its dependence on Internet Explorer, fax machines, and even floppy disks paint a picture of a country that swears by the motto “If it ain’t broke, don’t spend money to upgrade it.”
This attitude contributes to a low level of information security awareness, particularly when it comes to safeguarding personally identifiable information (PII). Instead of keeping this data self-contained in secure systems, some government and private company employees see fit to copy it onto USB sticks and take it home with them.
You can probably see where this is going.
