Earlier this month, Japan and the United States began sharing fingerprint data among their law enforcement agencies under a bilateral agreement.
The little-known agreement, negotiated in 2014 by the administrations of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and then-U.S. President Barack Obama, is intended to strengthen cooperation on fighting terrorism and organized crime by allowing their national databases to be cross-referenced.
While the agreement allows Japan's National Policy Agency and American law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to work more closely together, human rights advocates fear the data might be abused.