Thanks for your coments as well...

CL <flothru@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The privacy law changed in 2005 and there are a lot of strictures as to
> what can be published and who can publish it as well as who can hold
> data on file and what can be released to a third party.  Of course, laws
> are for civilians and not for kanryo.

Hm... that may change now, as well...

> [...] in the last couple of years a number of people who made the list
> have complained loudly, much to the bewilderment of the tax office
> people who honestly don't understand the potential danger of publishing
> where someone lives and how much money they have.  And, because it's not
> their department, tax people don't know that, with a little bit of
> effort, you can get a dimensional layout of the person's house and
> office from another department in the local yakusho ... nor do any of
> them seem to understand the significance of that.  Some gangs do, though.

Well, if you have enough money to make the list, you surely can have
your house protected with a mine belt, electric fence, and trained dogs,
no?

> But, as for the original question, it depends on what you publish, who
> publishes it, and what the intention is.  In which case, your question
> contains insufficient data.

Intention? I mean, if i publish the name, address, and birthdate of a
rather unknown person (meaning, soimeone who is not famous or well-known
and whose particulars are thus not commonly known) on a website,
praising her/him for a good deed, does that mean i can get away with it,
but if i do it with the added request that someone please break his
knees since he cheated me at mahjong, then i would be busted?

> Like a lot of things in Japan it is easier to apologize than to ask
> permission.

True inmany respects...

> This is one of those times where
> paying Yen 5,000 to the local bar association for a 30 minute
> inculcation in the ground rules may not be a bad idea. It may not be a
> good one, either.

;-)

> How about an opinion based upon experience?

That's still one of the best kinds of education one can have...

> One of the legacies of the Koizumi years is that a lot of basic
> information on people and institutions that was once readily obtainable
> in the public domain has gone behind walls and under counters manned
> by people who have no intention of letting it out.  The number of hoops
> that must be jumped through is in the increase and the local petty
> bureaucrat is king of the hill.

WEll, there is a trade off - i am sure that many people don't mind it if
someone came to their house and read their name of the name plate there
(i mean, they put their names there inthe first place), and many people
probably don't mind either if they are being mentioned in the newspaper
in some innocuous context, or even in a list of school graduates, but i
suspect that if there was a website that had information of the type
"the following people have graduated from XYZ school in ABC City this
spring: [names], [birthdates], [addresss]" i have the feeling that might
not go over well these days - but i don't know what the legal situation
is - the privacy law of 2005, which i have read (and maybe partially
understood), does not appear to address the issue in this form. In fact,
it does not sem to have anything that one could unequivocally interpret
as a "don't do XYZ under any circumstances" rule.

Al

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