TOKYO (REUTERS) - Japan launched a compulsory ID system on Monday aimed at bringing government into the electronic age in the face of stiff protests calling it a violation of privacy and a temptation to hackers.

A group of academics and activists presented the Home Affairs Ministry with a petition demanding the government halt the program, which links municipal computer systems and gives each Japanese citizen an 11-digit identification number. Full story at.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/08/05/020805hnjapanid.xml

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A high-tech privacy battle boiled over last week in Japan, where the government is attempting to roll out a national ID system called Juki Net, which assigns each citizen a number and enters personal information into
one central database.

Last week, six Japanese municipalities refused to carry out a government directive to tie their records into the new national network, which went live on Aug. 5. This defiance is shocking, because the Japanese almost
never say no to their government. Eighty-six percent of all Japanese say they expect personal information to leak from the network, and most want it postponed. This begs the question, What entities, globally, are the
best trustees for personal information? In the United States, we’ve decided it probably isn’t Microsoft or the government. But who DO we trust? (My nomination: Dairy Queen.) ( UPSIDE Insider, August 19, 2002 )