There is a strong social trend toward protecting privacy. A milestone will be the enforcement of the Private Information Protection Law beginning in April. But the government is apparently taking advantage of this trend and people's distrust of the media -- due to often sensationalistic crime coverage -- to control the flow of information.
The government draft of a basic plan for implementing the law, enacted in 2004, to provide assistance to crime victims and their family members contains a problematic clause. It says that the police should "comprehensively consider" the need to protect crime victims' privacy, on one hand, and the public interest in publicizing their names, on the other, so that an announcement of each crime is made in the most appropriate way. This means that the decision on whether to publicly identify crime victims should be left to the judgment of police.
A governmental study group is reported to have decided, in principle, to retain this clause, and the government is set to adopt it at a Cabinet meeting in December. If the draft is adopted as is, the police will have broader discretionary power and it is likely their decisions will become arbitrary.