Japan Mulls Monitoring Metadata To Preempt Cyberattacks

The Japanese government is considering allowing the peacetime monitoring of private metadata in a way that does not directly identify individuals, in a bid to bolster its pre-emptive cyberattack defenses, government sources said, Mainichi Shimbun reported.

Data such as messages themselves, in principle, will not be subject to monitoring, amid concerns that the plans to strengthen surveillance against potential cyberattacks could infringe on privacy.

Data such as messages themselves, in principle, will not be subject to monitoring, amid concerns that the plans to strengthen surveillance against potential cyberattacks could infringe on privacy, the sources said.

Japan's Constitution forbids the violation of the secrecy of any means of communication.

Instead, the government would allow, during normal times, surveillance of changes to information such as amounts of metadata -- accompanying data such as a message's size or the date it was sent -- and IP addresses that identify devices on networks.

The sources said the government has judged that limiting the target information to metadata would be within the scope of the law. Cyberattacks are often staged via multiple devices, making it useful to regularly monitor changes in data traffic and times information is sent.