'Hello, fingerprint please'
(From The Japan Times July 9 issue)

外国人に対する指紋押捺制度

    The government plans to submit a revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law to an ordinary Diet session next year with the aim of implementing the new measure in fiscal 2007.

    A foreigner would not only be photographed but have his or her fingerprint taken electronically at the time of entry. Photographing and fingerprinting foreigners at the time of departure is under consideration, according to the Justice Ministry. Foreigners classified as "permanent residents" would be exempt from the new measure.

    The government and the governing Liberal-Democratic Party believe that fingerprinting foreigners at departure will help to prevent those suspected of involvement in crimes in Japan from fleeing to other countries under false identities.

    Learning lessons from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States in January last year started taking fingerprints of foreigners with visas who enter the country at U.S. international airports and other major ports. The fingerprints are checked against those taken when the foreigner applied for a visa.

    The Japanese government has noted an increase in crimes committed by foreigners. The number of such crimes registered in 2004 was 47,124, an increase of 16 percent from 2003 and more than twice the number 10 years before. Meanwhile, the number of total crimes in 2004, standing at 2,562,767, marked an 8.1 percent decrease from 2003.

    The number of foreigners questioned as suspects or taken into custody in 2004 in connection with crimes totaled 21,842, a 9.2 percent increase from 2003. This number and the number of crimes committed by foreigners are the highest since the compilation of statistics on foreign crime began in 1980.

    The government thinks that comparing fingerprints taken at the time of entry with fingerprints on blacklists held by the Justice Ministry and the National Police Agency will help prevent criminals or would-be criminals from entering the nation. But at a time when only the United States requires fingerprinting of foreigners at the time of entry, the government should take a cautious approach.

    The government used to take fingerprints of foreign residents for residency-registration purposes. Many foreign residents, mostly Koreans, viewed it as humiliating. Regarding it as a symbol of discrimination against foreigners, they called for equal treatment of Japanese citizens and foreigners. Following a campaign against fingerprinting, the system was abolished in 1999.

    Even when fingerprinting was practiced, the Justice Ministry's official position was that fingerprint records held by the ministry would never be used in a criminal investigation. The Criminal Procedure Law states that authorities may fingerprint a person without a warrant only when the person is in custody as a criminal suspect. Thus obligatory fingerprinting of foreigners when they enter Japan, and possibly when they leave, could provoke protests that a new wave of discrimination is rising against foreigners.

    The question is whether the government can present a persuasive reason for introducing the new measure to foreign residents and foreign governments.

    There are other ways of reducing crimes by foreigners. One area the government should explore is bilateral treaties on criminal investigations that would enable direct cooperation between Japanese law enforcement officers and those of another country. This would quicken the pace of investigations.

    The Justice Ministry is considering unifying its databases on foreign residents, including information on nationality, names and addresses, entry and departure records, photographs and fingerprints of those deported, and passport information supplied by airlines and hotels.

    The LDP proposes that the information possessed by the ministry and that collected by other government agencies be integrated into one intelligence center. If, however, specific information ostensibly collected for the purposes of ascertaining identity is used in a criminal investigation, it could cause a problem from the standpoint of privacy protection.

    The LDP is considering introducing chip-embedded registration cards for foreign residents. Under these measures, foreign residents might feel that they were under constant surveillance. The least that the government and LDP should do is make public the details of their plans well in advance of the time that their crime-fighting proposals are due to take effect.

The Japan Times Weekly
July 16, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

      新制度の下で、外国人は入国時に写真を撮影され指紋を採取される。出国時にも同様の手順を繰り返す計画もあるという。ただし永住外国人は制度適用を免除される。

      政府・自民党は、出国外国人の指紋採取は、外国人犯罪容疑者が偽名を使って海外逃亡するのを防ぐ効果があるという。米は同時多発テロの経験を踏まえ、昨年から入国外国人の指紋を査証申請時に採取した指紋と照合する制度を導入した。

      日本の旧指紋押捺制度は外国人登録証作成のため導入された。これに対し多くの外国人、特に在日韓国人・朝鮮人は屈辱的で差別的だと反発、反対運動が起きて、同制度は1999年に廃止された。

      旧制度について法務省は、指紋記録は犯罪捜査に利用しないとしていた。刑事訴訟法でも、令状なしの指紋採取の対象になるのは、犯罪容疑者として身柄を拘束された人物に限るとしている。したがって、外国人が出入国時に強制的に指紋を採取されるとなれば、外国人差別の新しい動きとして批判を浴びるだろう。

      問題は、政府が外国人、外国政府に対し新制度導入の合理的根拠を示せるかだ。外国人犯罪を抑止する方法は他にもある。 法務省は、外国人居住者の国籍、氏名、住所、出入国の記録、強制送還者の写真・指紋などを含む各機関所有のデータベースの一本化を検討しているという。しかし、身元確認のための情報が犯罪捜査に使われると、個人情報保護の観点から問題になる可能性がある。

      自民党は、外国人対象のIC在留カード導入を検討しているというが、これらの制度のもとで外国人は、常時監視されていると感じるだろう。

      政府・自民党は、新防犯制度の詳細を、実施前に十分時間をかけて説明すべきだ。