Japanese internet cafe surveillance.

I am right now in the “Yahoo Cafe” airside in Terminal 2 at Tokyo Narita international airport, in transit on my way from London to Sydney. This internet cafe is absolutely free, and I have been using it for 45 minutes or so and nobody has asked me to stop. (There is a sign up saying that the cafe is there to advertise Yahoo and Toshiba – the computers are Toshiba laptops). This is great, partly because I always enjoy getting things for free without having to pay for them, and secondly because I do not have any Japanese money, and there are no cash machines airside. (Given the lack of enthusiasm that the Japanese have for credit cards, getting a beer is going to be harder).

However, there is a sign up outside the cafe stating that people who wish to use the cafe must provide their passports (or some equivalent form of ID) to be scanned or copied, so that use can be monitored. It is stated that “This request is in compliance with various Japanese laws”. As to whether this means that the laws require this, or whether they merely allow this, I do not know. It also says that people who do not wish to have their use monitored in this way should not use the cafe. (I will take a picture of the sign, and I will post it when I am in Australia. I could try to do it now, but the machine has no free USB ports. For reasons I will get to).

When I asked to use one of the computers, I handed over my (machine readable) passport, and my passport was actually scanned by a machine, which presumably read my passport number and other details electronically. I was then given an electronic key device, which I was required to plug into the USB port of the computer I want to use. Therefore, my internet use is being connected with my passport number.

I do not know if the “government regulations” require lead to things like happening at all internet cafes in Japan, or just those at the airport. However, I cannot imagine that this sort of system is very hard to subvert with the internet in present form. I am sure that actual criminals have no trouble using the internet anonymously, and that it is only normally law abiding people like me who get their use monitored. (I am almost tempted to go to a porn site to see if I am instantly thrown in a Japanese prison, but I rather doubt that would happen. For one thing, this is the land where people quite openly read pornographic comic books on the subway. They are rather more relaxed about this kind of thing than the Americans).

However, there are lots of proposals in place (justified in a lot of cases by fears of copyright violation) to build computer hardware in such a way that monitoring of this kind is ubiquitous and automatic for everyone everywhere.

However, it’s interesting and a little troubling to see that one government of a democratic and in some ways quite liberal country is trying to do it now.

Update: It is perhaps less sinister than that. I went to the bar for a little while, and I came back to the internet cafe. I was recognised and handed another USB key thingy without checking my ID again. As I doubt they remembered my name, it seems they are not matching internet use to actual people, but are merely checking ID. They could switch to matching very easily and without anyone noticing, of course.