DEMONSTRATORS DRESSED as prisoners and cows symbolically tore up their 11-digit Internet identifcation numbers in Tokyo earlier today, in protest over the government move to track wibblers anywhere in the country.
Up to one thousand protestors took to the streets in the Japanese capital to march on the home affairs ministry and deliver their objections to the move that sees the government assigning an ID number to every citizen.
And a select bunch of fifty ripped up their numbers and handed them to Tatsuro Yoshiyama, chief of the ministry's local administration, who refused to accept them for fear of breaching the regulations regarding their use. He told the protesters, "Local administrations cannot just use this number as they please," he said. "It may only be used to verify a person's residence."
The new computerised "resident registry network", commonly referred to as Juki Net, went into operation last Monday but has met resistance in some quarters. Five municipal governments, including Tokyo's Suginami Ward and Kokubunji City as well as Yamatsuri Town in the north, have refused to join the network, reports state. And Yokohama City has said it will only register people at their own request.
Privacy organisations joined the protest claiming it was a move towards a "Big Brother" state. They point to experiences in neighbouring South Korea, where identification numbers are issued at birth. There, 13,000 people were recently asked by the police to retake their driving tests after their numbers revealed they were former mental health patients. And, in a another scandal, a TV company is said to have used ID numbers to sign up 15,000 new subscribers without their knowledge.
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