Where are you headed to, Japan?
IMAGINE someone - me, for example - standing in front of one of the ubiquitous automatic vending machines in Japan.
“Hello, my name is M.S., I’m Xx years old, I live at this address in this city, and here’s my phone number. Could I… uhmm… buy a pack of cigarettes?”
The lines above might seem outright hilarious, yet they will apparently become part of a daily silent monologue for adult smokers like me, here in Japan. Or, at least, that’s what the newly implemented taspo IC card will communicate to the cigarettes vending machine at the corner of the street every time I’m going to make a purchase.
How do I see this?
Well, for now I can only say that this new rule meant to protect the society falls for me into a wider, and more worrisome global trend of infringements on personal privacy. I don’t have a tinfoil hat at hand, and even if I had I’d hesitate to put it on right now, but when you are brought to the stage that you have to provide personal identifiable information to the tobacco industry in any country just be able to buy a pack of smokes… I’d say that’s weird, at least a little.
So here’s my first, and therefore incomplete take on the issue.
1. taspo, - which is one of those oh, so dear Japanese acronyms - stands for “passport for access to cigarettes” (??????????????), and is part of an industry leaders’ initiative “to prevent underage smoking” in response to demands “by society as a whole”.(1) So we can now just go to sleep without worries: the three big daddies of Japanese Tobacco Industry heard our calls and they’re gonna watch over us… Right.
2. According to an article in The Japan Times, the tobacco industry said that “the trial use of the new vending machines [...] proved the system works” but then, the same “industry groups acknowledge that the system has loopholes”.(2) Behold, the acts of legislation and business schemes without loopholes!
3. A small but legitimate question: how and by who is my sent data processed and stored/used afterwards? The form I have to fill in and supply doesn’t look like a joke to me, but rather close to an application for a credit card. Name, signature, date of birth, fix/mobile number, full address, copy of identity verification documents (i.e. driver license), recent utility charge receipts in copy or even originals… and a recent photograph!(3) I for one, couldn’t see anything much more that I could provide them with, except probably with the structure of my DNA and my retinal or my fingerprint scan hashes.
4. I like their take on the role of the photograph on the IC card: “including a photograph of the card holder on the card increases the attribution of the card to the card holder by clearly identifying the holder and aims to prevent transfer and loaning and to increase the rigorousness of age verifications.”(4) Nevertheless, I don’t find it amusing.
The picture on the card is supposed to identify me when and in front of whom, once I use a vending machine? Who is supposed to make the verification, and on what grounds? How is going a picture on the card prevent its transfer, loaning or any other unintended use? And if it’s so cool and efficient, how come didn’t the credit card companies catch on this idea eons ago?
5. Finally, notice the downplay of the economical advantages apparently offered by the use of e-money: “The value of e-cash transactions are estimated to have reached ¥180 billion in 2006 and will probably hit ¥2.8 trillion by 2011, according to Nomura Research Institute, because more consumers are finding it convenient to pay with e-cash, simply by waving a smart card or e-wallet against a reader.”(5)
Incidentally, let alone 24/7 stores and other selling points, “The Tobacco Institute of Japan, an association of tobacco retailers” has “more than 600,000 cigarette machines nationwide”. You’ll agree with me when I’m going to tell you that this is a staggering 1 cigarette vending machine to every 212 Japanese residents.(6)
Now can we start talking prevention?…
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(1) What is ‘taspo’?
(2) IC you’re old enough to buy cigarettes: new vending machines.
(3) How to fill in the application forms.
(4) Introduction to taspo card.
(5) E-cash silencing the jingle of change.
(6) According to Wikipedia, Japan’s population in a 2007 estimate is of 127,433,494.
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