Japan and the new 1984 of corporate finance that suits the state apparatus
Sawako Utsumi and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The privacy of information is endlessly being crushed just like freedom on social media. George Orwell in 1949 published a powerful book titled Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). Sadly, the ramifications of his words are increasing but not as he expected. This notably applies to the role of globalism and corporate interests that deem people to be nothing more than marketing tools – and fodder for sharing private information to the highest bidder.
Increasingly, Japan is joining the club of abusing the privacy of individuals because we all know that this process will continue to grow and become even more sinister. At the same time, Orwell’s fear of the state apparatus overreaching itself is clear for all to see in nations like China where facial recognition areas and information is being used to crush dissent. Of course, nations like Iran, under the disguise of Islamic theocracy, also monitor and infringe on the Internet, social media, and other areas. However, in China, like Japan, you also have a corporate angle whereby people are just deemed to be “credit-worthy” and so forth.
Orwell didn’t foresee the growing threat of democracy and the growing clout of corporate companies in sharing the information of individuals. This isn’t surprising. After all, the technological gap between 1949 and today is a million miles away. Equally important, with Nazism being recently crushed in Orwell’s world, the next focus was on the growing power of the state apparatus in the Soviet Union and its outreach in Eastern Europe.
Yahoo Japan began a pilot in 2018 that further eroded the privacy of individuals and enabled third parties to share more private data. For now, individual users of Yahoo Japan have a slider button to opt-out. Yet, for people who don’t know about this – or, who will be manipulated by the information that this new goal is positive, then it is another Big Brother corporate dream. Hence, one can only imagine that companies and government agencies will seek even more private information in the near future. This will be based on more constraints on people who don’t opt-in and marketing that will seek to sell the positivity of Yahoo Japan and its “Good users” via the “Yahoo Score.” Likewise, one can envisage special perks in the future to users of Yahoo Japan that opt-in. Sadly, Facebook and the murky role of corporate finance, usage of private data, security agencies, and other negatives, will continue to apply to other companies and it appears that Yahoo Japan is following a similar path.
Equally important, the initial erosion of privacy in Japan will become further encroached upon and government engineering of society will follow to a more intense level. Therefore, the tyranny of China and Iran is being joined to a different degree by capitalism and democratic social engineering – along with privacy being utilized by the business sector.
Similarly, Mizuho Financial Group Inc (Mizuho FG) is joining the growing bandwagon in Japan. Once more, the word “consent” will be used. However, in truth, many Japanese nationals are extremely trusting. Also, Mizuho FG will market its new policy positively in order to allay fears. Yet, in time, the natural erosion of privacy will occur because the corporate capitalist Big Brother is joining the authoritarian way of thinking. Hence, a growing “information bank” will provide customer data that will involve the habits of individuals and so forth.
The CEO at Mizuho FG, Tatsufumi Sakai, uttered, “There are already many large corporate customers that have expressed their enthusiasm about buying such data. Banks have won more trust than firms in other business sectors because they spend large amounts of money on managing information.”
If George Orwell was alive today, then clearly his book would be focused on an array of angles that blight both the authoritarian, theocratic, and democratic world. Equally, Orwell would be alarmed that privacy is increasingly being infringed upon in countless ways that it almost appears normal. Therefore, privacy and freedom are being crushed by globalism, corporate finance, politically correct social engineering, and other negative areas related to the security apparatus in the democratic world – while the usual authoritarian and theocratic states are increasingly regulating society based on modern technology.
Sadly, Japan is joining the club whereby privacy and social engineering suit the state apparatus and corporate finance.
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