The Daily Yomiuri reports on privacy concerns about recently announced government plans for a comprehensive identification system to be implemented in 2015. The Council for a Number System for Social Security and Taxation drafted the plan, which would assign each citizen a unique number. The system would store such personal information as name, gender, annual income and number of dependents, the report states. But the plan calls for a third party to monitor the stored data, and it has yet to be determined what information could be used for business purposes, prompting concerns about data protection and privacy. A bill pertaining to the ID system is expected this fall.
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