Networked Information Processing and Changing Attitudes to Privacy in Japan

About

Dr Adams has just spent nine months visiting Meiji University in Tokyo, funded by a Global Research Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been studying the legal and social approach to privacy of electronic data in Japan and will present some of the results of his study.

There is a myth amongst researchers that there is no such thing as ‘Privacy’ in Japan. Dr Adams refutes that and shows that the advent of networked information processing of personal data has brought Japanese attitudes to information privacy to a highly similar position to Western attitudes.

Grounded in the social and psychological literature about Japan, this work explains the emergence of Japanese legal protection for personal data in recent years.