If companies do comply with the government's requests, then they should work to publicly explain how they will anonymize the data and dispel people's concerns over privacy violations.

Tetsuya Sakashita, an expert on personal data protection, commenting after the Japanese government requested on March 31 that major mobile carriers and tech firms voluntarily hand over data pertaining to users' locations and search data as part of efforts to track the spread of the novel coronavirus.

© Mainichi Shimbun