Japan online watchdog gets power to request removal of harmful content sites

Guidelines and requests? Why even bother? You don't need permission to request something...

as authorities respond to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's killer using information found online to build weapons.

And why has it taken so many months to make that decision ?

Response time is pitifully slow.

Will artificial intelligence actually help them make decisions and act ?

Response time is pitifully slow.

Half a year for government may be a little hasty. Contrary to the unintelligent man's beliefs, making laws and governing without having accidental far-reaching implications is particularly difficult. Of course, many people love to say "it's simple, they just need to..."

Armchair governors.

The internet is international and they can only remove posts from Japanese sites.

The IHC considers information on drug trafficking, child pornography and other acts as illegal content.

Illegal content what are they? Like criticizing government?

adding to the types of content that can be requested for removal by internet service providers, it aims to prevent crimes before they occur.To strengthen its online surveillance, the agency said it will also consider using artificial intelligence to analyze social media posts.

Do they have jurisdiction world wide? Even where jurisdiction they working, they couldn't do nothing with church solicitation prior to 2022.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japan-enacts-law-to-ban-malicious-donation-solicitations-after-unification-church-controversy

The cyber patrol center, which collects information to provide to the IHC, will also receive further support through the envisaged introduction of an AI system that analyzes online posts for potential criminal activity.

Japan's well-funded and high tech Cyber Patrol Center agents, taking down sites with dangerous information, defeated by their arch-nemeses villains VPN and TOR.

The IHC considers information on drug trafficking, child pornography and other acts as illegal content.

Isn't that stuff mostly on the dark web already? I am not aware of any illicit sites such as "childporn.com" or "cheapdrugs.jp"

Great news. No more Ukrainian propaganda.

Any content that trigger Japan

""Japan's internet watchdog can request instructional posts related to murder, guns and explosives be removed from March""

You forgot one or two major Harmful sites, one Suicide instructions, Child or under age Porn.

National Police need to be monitored for criminal activities as well.

Not sure pushing the nutcases further underground is a wise move.

I'm all for keeping an eye on them, but any idiot can just find the info they are looking for on international sites and copy-paste to Google translate. At least with these Japanese sites, they might be get a heads-up as to who they are. Removing the content is just playing whack-a-mole.

Rodney

You nailed it :)

quote: Content implying requests to intimidate or rob and kill could also be subject to the new guidelines.

Does that mean we cannot encourage the bumping off of murderous dictators?

quote: The internet is international and they can only remove posts from Japanese sites.

The nature of Japanese society means that the blocking of specific websites by Japanese ISPs and requesting the removal of Japanese language content on social media should be enough to show that they are doing something and maybe even calm the 'ban the internet for the sake of the children' brigade.

quote: Will artificial intelligence actually help them make decisions and act?

The more things you add to the list, the less effective any AI will be, and the more false positives you will get. If they use AI to reduce the pool they then manually examine, it would reduce their workload a bit. Relying on AI to autoblock is disastrous as all sorts of innocuous material gets blocked. The more you focus by targeting specifics, the more effective you can be.

Ultimately they are trying to monitor the conversations of maybe 80 million people, 24/7. It's like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Anyone actually up to anything nefarious will simply use encryption and be invisible to them.

You can find out how to make a gun, explosives or an atomic bomb in dozens of books, several movies and some documentaries. Many of the conversations online that would be removed are happening every day in cafes, pubs, classrooms and homes.

Fax machines will be in overdrive!

Just get a domain outside of Japan.

I suppose they could geoblock it though. The internet is actually becoming more regionalised. We headed for polarisation.

The Internet used to be a Free Democracy where anything goes.

Now it's subjected to filtering before you see it, by your Country of Residence, your Employer, and even your Housing residence.

A VPN is, currently the only way around this type of CENSORSHIP, though as China has shown, VPNs themselves can be targeted and disabled.

We are Rapidly heading into an environment where we are thought of, not as individuals but instead, as a Collective state Property, and have to adhere to the thinking's / belief's of that state - regardless to our own Nationality / up-brining.

and other acts as illegal content.

That part has me concerned too, what else will they sneak in with this law?

Basically, they want the power to remove any content that the J-government or their cronies do not like.

For example:

1) Criticizing the LDP of Japan on JT

2) Exposing the LDP and corporate corruption (no more Moonies, Abe, or Ghosn scandals)

The Japanese government has more in common with the CCP than they would like to admit!

That part has me concerned too, what else will they sneak in with this law?

Laws to protect one of Japan's national treasures, Manga! The special interest groups supporting Manga firms are quite fierce!

When old oyajis are not sleeping in meetings or at hostess bars, they are reading manga to pass the time of being incompetent leaders of society and industry.

I'm sure plenty of people are shaking in their boots

... the power to...request.

"Sigh"