Japanese officials in tables-turned GPS tracking rumpus

Normally, one expects any story about military-industrial-complex bureaucrats and hi-tech surveillance to involve the officials spying on someone else. Not today in Japan, though, as a plan seems to be afoot for defence ministry people to be tracked using GPS-enabled cellphones. Many parents are at least considering the use of …

[Dan]

meanwhile

thousands of defenceless dolphins slaughtered, the bloody savages.

[Marvin the Martian]

Burocrazy

This must be one of the first times those hardcore bureaucrats protest against a bonus layer of paperwork to organize, file, fill with jobs and administer! How bizarrely unnatural.

[laird cummings]

Waaah.

Buncha whining infants. "We're not children" they cry, yet act like children by that very complaint. They're guardians of the public trust and are entrusted with spending public moneys in defense of their nation, and yet have been caught violating that trust. Of *course* their privacy is being invaded - they've failed (in the general sense) in their charge.

If their privacy is so important to them, they can take less-responsible positions, where any malfeasance will have less impact on their nation and its policies.

I further suggest that this program be expanded to *anyone* in government with budgeting or purchasing power over about one million dollars (US) per annum.

Mind you, meetings with some lobbyists and contractors are inevitable - it can't be avoided at certain levels of government. However, now the Japanese can know who's doing rather a lot of it, and can demand clarifications or explanations. Who knows? Maybe the meetings are innocent - if so, no harm done.

Trust, but verify.

[b shubin]

Not invasive enough

these are government officials, and when they are at work, they get oversight, not privacy.

leave your phone on your desk when you go home, but know that people will notice that it is not with you (and wonder what you do off-hours, same like they do now). if you work in government, you deserve no privacy.

laird has a point.

i would suggest, however, that the budget power ceiling be $10K, not $1M, makes it harder to weasel out of. or better yet, everybody is subject to oversight, no matter where in government you work. spooks may be an exception (they would have to fake it anyway to maintain secrecy, so no point in trying).

[lglethal]

Can see a couple of problems with this

1) Leaving the phone at home would tend to make your meetings invisible again

2) Take the wife out to dinner at a posh restaurant and "by chance" a potential contractor is sitting at the table next to you, a conversation ensues, money changes hands (perhaps), and dinner continues. Knowing the general was in the restaurant is not going to be able to tell you much unless all of the potential contractor's are monitored as well.

3) Anyone wanting to assassinate/kidnap/doing something nasty to a general now has a very easy way of finding out exactly where they are.

But at least the wives of the generals would be able to conduct there affairs much more easily because they now know exactly where their husbands are! :P

Still i'd love to see this implemented on all of the politicians in this country! Especially during election campaigns! :P

[Roger Lee]

Do they not have tin boxes in Japan?

'Nuff said.