＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X
<Added March 22, 2021> The issue of personal information on LINE being accessible to Chinese engineers
According to reports, “four Chinese engineers have accessed personal information (such as user names, phone numbers, and email addresses) at least 32 times since August 2018.”
LINE “outsources its app system management to a company in Shanghai, China.” Furthermore, while “LINE IDs, phone numbers, email addresses, location information, etc.” are “managed in a data center in Japan,” “LINE Pay transaction information, etc.” is “managed in a data center in South Korea, where NAVER, one of its parent companies, is headquartered.” The company has bases outside of Japan and South Korea, and conducts development and monitoring at several locations in China.
China’s “National Intelligence Law,” enacted in 2017, requires Chinese companies to cooperate with government requests. This not only raises concerns about personal information being leaked overseas, but also raises concerns that if important communications are conducted by individuals in high-ranking government positions using LINE, that information could be leaked to the Chinese government under the National Intelligence Law. This is a serious problem.
The problem lies in the fact that systems development and management related to personal information are not carried out domestically by purely Japanese companies, but are instead easily outsourced to Chinese and Korean companies.
Before moving forward with the “digitalization of government administration” and the “establishment of a Digital Agency,” the creation of a “Cybersecurity Agency” to protect personal information from cyberattacks from China and other countries is a priority.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has been calling for the creation of a “Digital Agency” to advance the digitalization of government administration since the presidential election, and on September 17th he met with Digital Transformation Minister Takuya Hirai and instructed him to accelerate work to establish the Digital Agency.
But is the creation of a new “Digital Agency” to centralize digital policies currently spread across various ministries and agencies really an urgent issue at this time?
In this article, I would like to consider the problems with the creation of a “Digital Agency” and the current urgent issue of “strengthening cybersecurity measures.”
1. Is the creation of a “Digital Agency” unnecessary or non-urgent?
Will “centralizing digital policies currently spread across various ministries and agencies” really “break down the drawbacks of vertically divided administration”? I have my doubts.
And is it really necessary to accelerate the spread of “My Number Cards”? The public, especially middle-aged and older people who prefer analog methods, are quite fed up with the rapid “digitalization” of the world.
The repeated glitches with “online applications” for COVID-19 relief funds have also had a negative impact. It has inadvertently become clear that “paper applications” are much faster and require less effort for both the applicant and the government agency accepting them. The lack of widespread adoption of e-Tax applications is also due to problems.
Many office workers are aware of the counterproductive phenomenon of “going paperless” actually increasing paper consumption.
I believe that there is absolutely no need to panic just because Japan is “lagging behind South Korea in digitalization.”
Now is the time to be wise and “use digital and analog appropriately.”
2. The current urgent issue is “strengthening cybersecurity measures”
Cyberattacks by China, Russia, and North Korea are becoming increasingly intense, targeting not only government agencies and large corporations, but also small and medium-sized enterprises.
In addition, there has been a rise in cybercrimes such as “fraudulent withdrawals from Docomo accounts,” “fraudulent withdrawals from PayPay,” and “brushing scams,” threatening the assets of Japanese citizens on a wide scale.
One concerning aspect of the “fraudulent withdrawals from Docomo accounts” incident is the ease with which our account information could be stolen. According to multiple experts, a method known as a “reverse brute force attack” appears to have been used.
Brute force means “exhaustive attack,” and refers to a method of trying every password possible against a single ID. However, in recent years, systems have been introduced that lock IDs after several incorrect passwords, so this method is not always effective.
On the other hand, the method believed to have been used in this case is the opposite (reverse) method, in which a fixed PIN, such as “1111” or “1234,” is used, and a computer tool is used to brute force search for a matching 7-digit account number. This method only tries each password once for each account number, preventing it from being locked. As you can see, computer-based crimes are rapidly evolving.
In that sense, the current urgent task is to “strengthen cybersecurity measures.”
3. Rather, the creation of a “Cybersecurity Agency” is a priority.
Japan is known as a “spy paradise” for its lax approach to espionage, so while the enactment of an anti-espionage law is urgently needed, I also believe that the creation of a “Cybersecurity Agency” and the establishment of a national defense system against cyberattacks are also urgent priorities.
Further strengthening of security measures is required for financial institutions, telecommunications companies handling online payments, e-commerce site operators, and other organizations, and strong government guidance is needed now more than ever.