EDITORIAL: Monitoring Net habits

Any policy to advance deregulation of cyberspace to satisfy the desires of advertisers and the Internet industry at the expense of individual privacy would be intolerable.

With that thought in mind, the proposal on Internet advertising recently compiled by a study group under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications demands close scrutiny.

The group provisionally approved the use in online advertising of deep packet inspection (DPI), a technology that allows Internet service providers to monitor communications and collect information on users.

The condition for freeing up DPI for that application is that industry guidelines be set for subscriber consent and other demands.

If approved, DPI would make it possible to post ads recommending specific products to users even if they visit a website for the first time.

This is much akin to a person phoning in a home-delivery sushi order, and then later being hounded by sales pitches from catering services that secured the customer's number from the phone company.

Article 21 (Clause 2) of the Constitution says "the secrecy of any means of communication" must not be violated.

A green light for DPI would essentially shelve this provision in favor of eavesdropping for commercial pursuit, albeit with certain conditions. This is an outrageous proposition.

Internet shopping businesses and other website operators have independently collected information on Internet user histories and other data on a limited basis for advertising purposes.

In contrast, advertising that enlists communications monitoring would make it far more difficult for users to know where their information has been acquired and how it will be used. The use of DPI for advertising has yet to be commercialized in countries like the United States or Britain.

The ministry's study group has mentioned six possible conditions for study in preparing the guidelines for Internet operators.

These conditions include: the need for service providers to explain to subscribers in advance how the information will be gathered and how it will be used; halting such information harvesting if users are opposed to having their data collected with DPI; and measures to prevent user information from being leaked.

These safeguards are woefully inadequate to draft a truly stringent set of guidelines.

The ministry apparently feels that as long as the industry prepares such rules there is no need to amend the Telecommunications Business Law or government or ministerial orders on protecting privacy in communications.

This is a truly puzzling conclusion.

Using legal loopholes to open the door to corporate advertising activities that systematically secure widespread consent is not a sound idea.

In Europe and North America, forerunners in the debate surrounding such issues, the watchdog function of citizens groups runs strong.

In Europe, a committee whose purpose is to uphold privacy in the communications field keeps the Internet industry from crossing the line.

In Japan, on the other hand, the clout of consumers and civic groups is weak. The approaches taken by the government, moreover, are also disjointed at best.

This underscores the pressing need to lay the foundation for a civil society capable of protecting the privacy of users from both the dark side of technological progress and the excesses of industry.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 2