Internet privacy in Japan

[Mike Oxlong]

The US has gone to hell in a handbasket...

Good luck finding a safe VPN
Everyone’s telling you to use a VPN but not how to choose a good one.

What us the situation here regarding ISPs and their customers' data?

[matsuki]

Google as an ISP seems sooo much more feasible...

[wagyl]

What us the situation here regarding ISPs and their customers' data?

Here are a couple of articles on situation in Japan:
https://www.loc.gov/law/help/online-pri ... /japan.php
http://www.hldataprotection.com/2015/02 ... n-in-asia/

What is getting everyone upset in the US is the commercialisation of browsing habits. What Japanese law protects is

information about a living individual that identifies the specific individual by name, date of birth, or other description contained in such information, including such information as will allow easy reference to other information and will thereby enable the identification of the specific individual.

so it could be argued that the very likely result of ISP data exploitation in the US -- gathering together the group of black lesbian paraplegics on Okinawa who access fuckedgaijin.com about once a day and targetting the sale of advertising towards that group, but not going so far as to identify an individual such as Mike Oxlong as one of that group, precisely what Google and Facebook do -- would not infringe Japanese guidelines.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications did have a Working Group to examine Smartphone and Cloud Security, but the report focussed on advice to update OS, update anti-virus and make sure apps are properly vetted: like the Privacy Law, the focus is on stopping bad people getting access to the information, not so much on preventing the good guys from commercialising it. That said, the Japanese default is that you have opted out of the provider using the data, not a default opt in. So long as you read the fine print (... yeah, I know) you have stronger control than in the US.

Of course, there are ISPs and there are ISPs. Out in the deep, snowy valleys, the ISP was a joint venture between the municipal government and JA. Whether that makes things safer for the individual or more dangerous is a matter of opinion.