
Japanese Government Workers Wary of My Number Cards as ID - jamesknelson
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002532635
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efaref
> “There should be no worries about personal information being leaked,”

This always makes me _more_ worried about personal information being leaked,
as it implies they haven't considered the possibility carefully enough.

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deepnet
" The government plans to provide special holders for the cards that would
hide sensitive information, leaving only the person’s face and name visible. "
The article implies that the there are no worries about info leaks because of
the special card carrier that obscures personal details.

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rangibaby
Foreigners have had to carry "residence cards" (formerly alien registration
cards) which are basically these for years.

Having said that, the My Number system is bullshit and will hurt the economy
because it will hit people who spend the most money (working cash jobs, side
business at home...) disproportionately.

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level3
It seems like the foreigner residence cards are only superficially similar.
For example, the ID number on the residence card is not a permanent identifier
over your lifetime (your number will change when you renew your card). In
general, that number is also not directly connected to many other things, not
in the way that the government is planning for the My Number system.

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Shivetya
Seems strikingly similar the US Real ID Act.

The question simply becomes one of, do we truly need a card to identify
ourselves to any government or private agency? Currently many places require
multiple proofs, so how hard is it to fake/corrupt a singular one? Honestly
how is a chip going to protect from someone stealing your card and using
before you can alert authorities? Are they PIN protected?

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anon4
How is this different from practically every kind of ID card? Don't they all
usually have

1\. Your name

2\. Your picture

3\. Your date and place of birth

4\. Date and place of issue

5\. Validity date

6\. Some sort of number or alphanumeric code unique to your card

7\. Anti-forgery measures like holograms etc.

You shouldn't leave something like that dangling from your neck, of course.

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kalleboo
Most of the controversy is because they've never had a mandatory
identification number before, and there's always going to be fear and
resistance against introducing that kind of thing. I think Japan is a highly
privacy-conscientious society, for instance it's still very cash-based.

The less populistic and more informed resistance is, as I see it, based on the
fact that the My Number is designed to be a "secret" number you're only
supposed to share with the authorities (as in, high risk of identity theft if
the number is leaked) similar to the US SSN. But in order to try to increase
popularity (and adoption), they're trying moves such as adding a grocery tax-
refund scheme, which necessitates showing the ID card with the number
prominently printed to minimum wage cashiers, etc. They've tried to placate
fears with comments such as "but it's illegal for the cashiers to look at the
number" and "you can have a new number issued 3 times!".

I'm from another country with a personal ID number. I find it very handy. But
there it's not assumed to be secret (even some online shopping sites will
accept it as entry to auto-populate your address from the population
register), so there's some extra e.g. ID checks when you use it, lowering the
risk of identity theft.

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Canada
Population register? That sounds like a database I'd like to query millions of
times. Which country are you from?

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orjan
Sweden, I assume. The personnummer (personal number) consists of the
following:

\- The birth date, e.g. 640823 (YYMMDD)

\- The birth number, three digits. Last digit is odd for men and even for
women.

\- A check digit, calculated by the Luhn algorithm.

A full example: 640823-3234 -- a male born on August 23, 1964.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Or Norway. Very similar except five digits after the birthdate. But no id card
here; although my driving license is a de facto id card.

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Angostura
A decent test would be to require all government ministers to wear the badges
while in the chamber, in particular for all televised sessions.

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gtirloni
At least they're practicing "eat your own dog food". Luckily this will get
shot down after too many govt workers get impacted, before it reaches the
general population.

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nerdcity
>“It’s been decided by the government as a whole, so our job is just to go
ahead with it,” said an official at the personnel affairs division.

This sentiment makes me feel ill...

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omginternets
You'll find that the Japanese relate to government (and indeed most forms of
group dynamics) quite differently from Westerners. I think there's a cultural
element you and I are missing, here.

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caskance
It's not correct to lump all westerners into one group like that. Although
this attitude is probably quite foreign to Americans, I see it quite often
among Swedes and Danes.

~~~
omginternets
>It's not correct to lump all westerners into one group like that.

You're nitpicking. Sweedes, Danes, Russians and really everybody in the
Western hemisphere is miles more individualist than the Japanese.

The irony is that you seem to be mistaking me for an American while having no
real counterpoint; the fact remains that we're probably missing a cultural
element.

~~~
drdaeman
> Russians

Let me doubt this. There are a lot of individualist (esp. in large cities like
Moscow and St.Petersburg), but they seem to be somewhat outnumbered by an
awfully large number of Russians who consider government as having ultimate
authority. I think we can well try to compete with many eastern countries in
this regard.

~~~
omginternets
Perhaps, although having Russian family and having spent a few months in
Kyoto, my impressions are quite different. To be clear: Russians are much more
collectivist than, say, the French. There's no doubt about that.

Either way, this entire thread of conversation remains a pedantic derailment
of an original point that still stands.

