The Nagoya High Court on Aug. 30 sounded the alarm about the current situation where anyone could be treated as a criminal suspect for life once they have been deemed as such by Japan’s law enforcement authorities.

The court ordered the National Police Agency to delete from the police database all DNA and fingerprint evidence, as well as mug shot data, that had been collected from a man in Nagoya at the time of his arrest in 2016 on suspicion of assault.

He was indicted but acquitted and the not-guilty verdict was later finalized.

All people are entitled to protect their personal information from being collected, held and used without good reason.

The appeal court’s ruling was based on the constitutional guarantee that all people are to be respected as individuals. As such, it answered the public's questions and concerns related to personal data.

Of all types of personal data held by police, DNA, which is considered as the “ultimate personal data” because it contains far more information than anything else, calls for special handling.

Depending on technological advances, there is no knowing how DNA will come to be used.

In Germany, the use of DNA data in criminal investigations is limited only to major cases and an assessment is made after a prescribed period to determine whether to delete it from the database.

South Korea has a DNA law instituted in 2010, providing that any DNA evidence collected from criminal suspects must be deleted if they are later acquitted. The procedure is monitored by a third-party organ.

Japan started operating a DNA database of criminal suspects in 2005 and 1.75 million cases had been registered by the end of last year.

But the government is reluctant to establish a law regarding operations of the database and continues to operate it in keeping with the rules of the National Public Safety Commission.

Many people believe they will never come under police suspicion. But in the man’s case, the court concluded that he had been arrested based on a false accusation.

And there have been cases where people had their DNA collected for merely putting up “lost dog” posters on utility poles or fishing in restricted areas in alleged violations of local ordinances or the minor offenses law.

If police are accused of randomly collecting personal data, they have only themselves to blame.

Moreover, collected data will not be readily deleted in Japan. There were about 4,000 deletions last year, but the majority were due to the deaths of the suspects concerned.

The National Public Safety Commission’s rules say that data is to be erased “when there is no need to keep it any longer,” but whether to actually do so is left to police discretion.

This means that police will likely not even bother to delete the data of suspects who were not prosecuted, or who was later acquitted like the plaintiff in the case.

We can only conclude that the rules are designed to work in favor of investigators.

We can understand the usefulness of DNA data in solving tough cases and even proving the innocence of victims of false accusations.

On the other hand, police sometimes collect personal data not only from criminal suspects, but also broadly from neighborhood residents.

This necessitates the establishment of legislation to strictly regulate the procedures for collection, storage and deletion of personal data, so that society can come to trust the system.

In its ruling, the Nagoya High Court also raised the possibility of DNA data collection making citizens feel intimidated about their data being in a police database for ready examination, causing them to refrain from participating in civic activism as a result.

The court mentioned this because what triggered the man’s case in the first place was attending a protest rally against the planned construction of an apartment complex in front of his house.

A society is not healthy if citizens tend to withhold their opinions for fear of disturbing the public safety.

The government must delete the plaintiff’s personal data in compliance with the court ruling and also start, at the same time, working on needed legislation.

And as for the Diet, postponing any discussion of the issue constitutes professional negligence.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 4