A bill to revise the Police Duties Execution Act is set to pass the House of Representatives on Tuesday, clearing the way for police to remotely analyze smartphones without prior notice, a power opposition parties support in principle but say lacks adequate safeguards.
Fraud losses have reached their worst level on record, and most opposition parties are prepared to vote for the bill. The concern that remains is abuse of remote analysis, its largest change, the Hokkaido Shimbun reported.
The bill's core provision would let police access a smartphone without notifying its user, aimed at preventing harm to life and property from serious crimes. It targets anonymous and mobile crime groups, known in Japan as tokuryū, which use encrypted messaging apps among their members. Officers would seek to identify and protect victims in advance.
Remote analysis is expected to help prevent harm by capturing information before it is encrypted. Opposition parties broadly accept the need for the measure, leaving how to prevent its abuse as the focus of debate.
Checks before and after
Safeguards sit on both sides of the operation. Police must obtain court permission in advance, setting out why the device is a target and the specific range of information to be collected.
Opposition lawmakers object that permission from a judge at a district court or a summary court would be enough. The wiretap law, which allows interception of calls and emails for criminal investigations, grants that authority only to district courts, and the opposition warned that judicial checks would be weaker.
The wiretap law names the crimes it covers, limiting police discretion. The Police Duties Execution Act uses vaguer wording, and members of the lower house Cabinet Committee repeatedly called for greater transparency, citing low public trust in the police in various surveys.
Oversight after an operation was also debated. Prefectural public safety commissions would receive a report afterward, confirm whether the investigation was conducted properly and instruct police on any measures needed. Device users would in principle be notified after the fact.
Opposition lawmakers pointed out that there is no obligation to report to the Diet. The wiretap law requires the government to report annually to the Diet on the number of interceptions and the charges involved, but the police duties bill provides only for reporting to public safety commissions, with no provision for publication.
Six ruling and opposition parliamentary groups, excluding the Japanese Communist Party, jointly proposed and adopted a supplementary resolution during committee deliberations on Friday. It asks the government to clarify the categories of crime, apply the power strictly and report at the Diet's request.
Yasuhiro Hanashi, chair of the National Public Safety Commission, said only that the government would respond appropriately in line with the resolution's intent.
A lawyer's view
Masayuki Watanabe, a lawyer at Miyake Law Office in Tokyo, called remote analysis necessary to counter tokuryū. Because the supplementary resolution has no legal binding force, he said, transparency cannot be said to be fully guaranteed.
He proposed that the government report and publish the number of operations each year regardless of whether the Diet asks, and review how the power is used at regular intervals.