Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency Refuses to Release (or Acknowledge the Existence of) Privacy Act Request Documents

I don't have time to translate these or go into detail, but Japan's equivalent to the CIA and FBI (all rolled up into one bundle), have refused to acknowledge whether or not they even have any information that they should release in response to the Privacy Act requests I submitted.

The reason is for "National Security" reasons, and/or that they relate to investigations conducted by the Agency. 

In fact, the scenario is even worse in Japan than the USA, because you have to specify the name of the file in which the information would be if they did have it. In other words, you have to specify the file name in their bureaucratic system corresponding, and that corresponds only to activities that are publicly acknowledged by the Agency; that is to say, it doesn't include covert operations they are conducting in conjunction with intelligence agencies of other countries based on classified Agreements.

The Privacy Act Requests also had to be broken down into two batches so as not to overburden the Agency, or so they claimed. The page at top is related to the first batch pertaining to investigative activities related to Right Wing Groups, North Korea, and China, and the bottom page to the second batch pertaining to investigative activities related to Left Wing Groups (what the refer to as domestic extremists, and how they distinguish those from right-wing extremists is unclear, so I've broken out "left wing groups"), The Communist Party, and International Terrorists. I've omitted the related documents for the second batch, as they are basically the same as those for the first.   










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