Japanese government to make Aliens Carry IC Cards as ID
Yes, I have official Japanese government proof that I’m an ALIEN.
Above is a picture of my Japanese Alien Registration Card, hee, hee.
Every foreigner in Japan longer than 90 days has to go down to their ward office to get one. It’s a pain in the ass but the gaijin card has been a mostly harmless process until now.
The current alien registration card (Gaikokujin Toroku) contains the holder’s name, nationality, date of birth, place of birth, address, passport information, visa status, occupation and company or school. The new IC card will be tied into a new “intelligence center,” and will hold fingerprint data to compile database on foreigners.
Think “666, the mark of the Beast” and put on your tinfoil hat because it is unclear whether these will RF capable cards that can be read at long distence. I say tinfoil hat because if you were paranoid about broadcasting all your personal information, all you have to do is wrap this IC card in tinfoil to block any transmission of your data.
Japan Gov’t will require all foreigners to carry IC card IDs
….plan to require all foreigners staying in Japan for more than 90 days to carry identification cards equipped with integrated circuit chips, with all data to be kept at an “intelligence center,”
…the new system, intended to replace the current Certificate of Alien Registration that foreigners have to carry…
Under the plan, foreigners will have to carry with them at all times IC cards that contain information such as their name, nationality, address, birth date, passport number, visa status and place of employment or study. Holders will be required to report any change of address and obtain permission to change jobs.
…..Under the new policy, companies and schools where foreigners work or study will also be required to report to the authorities about when the foreigners move or change jobs, and will be subject to penalties for any falsified information….
More worrying to some gaijin in Japan, is that these new Alien Registration rules and IC cards will be require them to obtain permission to change jobs.
Sounds like slavery, doesn’t it?
Well it is.
Welcome to Japan Inc.
ALL Japanese have to follow a simliar rule because they have to obtain a “Permission to Leave the Company” certificate to quit a company. It sucks to have to grovel to ask for this even though your soon-to-be-ex-boss is more or less required to give it to you.
Actually, all foreigners must report to their ward office in 30 days any changes of address or job in the current Alien Registration system. The new IC card for Alien Registration system is simply codifying the present rules on a national database scale.
But wait there’s more fun.
There’s the new-n-improved ” Immigration BLACKLIST.”
In the past, the Immigration blacklist was just that a paper list on names and passport numbers of evil gaijin who had been caught at such evil deeds as failing to notifying their ward office of overstaying their visa one week or quiting and getting new job. Needless to say the paper blacklist was not effective. Now the national blacklist will have more effect. It’s actually been computerized for two years now and at every Japanese airport the authorities now know that I was arrested for running an illegal frog jumping contest in 1981.
The Yomiuri Shimbun, KRT Wire | 06/11/2005 | Japanese government plans to compile database on foreigners
TOKYO - The Justice Ministry…. can currently search online only text information, such as an individual’s name and nationality, and plans to upgrade the system to download images, such as people’s photos and fingerprints.
Records on individuals who in the past were deported after committing crimes also will be able to be accessed online under the new system, according to the sources, adding that those records are now available only by fax from the local immigration bureau that deported the individual….
UPDATE:
The reports are the Japan is still at “working team” on the IC card for Aliens. Therefore there gonna a lot more time and a bunch more changes before this Mark-of-the-Beast-666 IC card law goes into effect.
Kyodo via Yahoo: Japan eyes tightening control of foreign residents
The Japanese government decided Tuesday to set up a working team to consider ways of tightening its control of foreign residents as an anticrime step. The team will consider such measures as requiring long-stay foreigners in Japan to carry identification cards equipped with integrated circuit chips, government officials said. Envisaged to comprise senior officials from various ministries, the team is expected to come up with specific steps in about a year and present a bill to revise the foreign resident registration law, possibly in the regular Diet session in 2007, one official said.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier proposed that the government require all foreigners staying in Japan for more than 90 days to carry ID cards with chips recording their identity data. The LDP and the government claim the new policy is aimed at keeping track of foreigners as part of its measures to prevent terrorism and crimes. The working team will also consider easing restrictions on foreign residents such as enabling them to stay longer in Japan, the officials said.
Also read News.3Yen.com’s report: Japan landing announcement: “Please take your free IC ID cards at the airport and always carry them.”
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November 22nd, 2005 at 11:34 am
The Japan Times Online
the “zairyuu card,” is obligatory and replaces the Gaijin Card. All resident aliens (except the generational “Zainichi” ethnic “foreigners,” who remain unchipped) must still carry it 24/7 or face arrest.
This “Gaijin Chip” will contain data such as: “name, nationality, birthday, passport information, visa status, address, workplace, educational institution if student etc.”
Fingerprints will also be encoded “if the person wants.” But just in case, fingerprinting will be reinstated to imprint foreigners both entering and leaving the country.
The LDP sweet-talks the reader by insisting the system is for people’s “protection” (”hogo”) and “convenience” (”ribensei”). They mention benefits to both foreigners and society by tracking alien visits to, quote, “museums, consultative government bodies, national art museums . . .”
It still amounts to central control of untrustworthy elements, and treating foreigners like criminal suspects.
Some expressed goals of Gaijin Chipping are, “strengthening control of residency information,” “ease and precision of collection, analysis, and practical use of data for Immigration,” and, more colorfully, “smoking out the invisible (’aburi dasu’) illegal aliens.”
All data will be stored for a vague amount of time (perhaps indefinitely) in a bureau called (in katakana) the “Intelligence Center.”
Through a joint Immigration/National Police Agency “task force” on foreigners, this data will be issued to cops and bureaucrats “so they can better service each individual foreigner as a resident without obstacle.”
Orwellian overtones aside, consider the policy in practice: Workplaces, schools, hotels, etc. will be legally required to report any changes in foreigner employment, domicile, visa, etc., through swipes of IC Cards at strategically-positioned machines.
This means foreigners will now find it difficult to, say, make an anonymous inquiry at a ward office without having their data swiped.
Likewise if you frequent love hotels. The proposal specifically considers swiping stations for apartments, weekly mansions, and other categories of lodgings, essentially expanding Japanese prison conditions nationwide. If an inmate asks for, say, a pencil in a Japanese prison, he has to give a fingerprint. A roll of toilet paper? Fingerprint. Now, go see some Basho etchings in a museum as a foreigner? Swipe.
November 22nd, 2005 at 5:53 pm
A bit of misinformation here. For one thing, holders of permanent resident status are not required (now, or when the new cards are issued) to seek permission or notify anyone upon change of job, and neither is this job information printed on the current alien registration card.
Second, foreigners with work permits (not permanent residents) have always been required to notify the bureaucracy (and seek permission?) on job changes, so this is nothing new.
The only changes between the proposed and current system, as far as I know, is that the information will be on a chip instead of laminated on the card (this is no big deal in itself, but there are implications for how this might be used or abused in the future) and the fact that fingerprinting will be reinstated. This is a very unfortunate step backward. Certainly not one that I am very happy about.
And another observation, I’m not justifying this ID practice, but even an idiot can see this happening. In the US it probably isn’t far away (foreigners in the US are already being fingerprinted) and in Europe, most recently the UK, the idea of a must have ID card is also being floated. What surprises me is that a lot of people just shrug it off and say “well it can’t be helped, with all these terrorists about…” and they aren’t idiots either, one can see their point, but still, when you give up freedoms, it can be a slippery slope, and we forget the sacrifices that our parents’ generations made to keep these freedoms in the first place. (The first and second world wars, for example???)
And all of this is really the fault of Western (especially the US) countries in the first place.
Listen, what is wrong with this reasoning: Goverments such as Japan, the US, Britain don’t have any desire to control their citizens just because it turns them on. They do it because they believe it is a necessary measure to combat international terrorism.
Terrorists, in turn, don’t kill or threaten to injure or kill people because they enjoy it, but rather because they are fighting a war. In their eyes, US soldiers in battle fatigues carrying loaded weapons and patrolling the streets of Baghdad are creating terror. What we call “terrorists” are in fact human beings, with families, with fear and hatred in their hearts. They don’t have the money to afford nuclear bombs and stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, so they fight any way that they can.
And what are they fighting against? They are fighting against Western capitalist, Christian inroads and incursions against their cultures and religion. I don’t even think the Isreal - Palestine thing is really at the heart of it. That is old generation thinking. The fact is that even if the Palestinians and Isralis worked out a real deal, the hatred of us would continue.
So, the loss of our freedoms is the logical response of a democratic governments against real and serious threats against the citizens and residents of those democracies, threats which are themselves the rational response of underpowered, oppressed people in the non-Western world. In a nutshell: what goes around comes around. Personally, I think it is entertaining. I hope the West is in for a bundle of surprises.