Sendaiben digs deeper on those Narita Airport racially-profiling Instant NPA Checkpoints
Posted by debito on 5th September 2010
Sendaiben: Flying out of Narita on September 5th, I had a few hours to kill after connecting from Sendai. I was alone, reading on a bench in the restaurant area. After about 20 minutes, a young and very pleasant policeman came up and asked to see my passport in passable English. I replied in Japanese, and we had an interesting conversation. Unfortunately I was mentally unprepared for all of this, so gave him my passport from which he noted down all the details. I refused to provide a contact phone number, however…
Some important points:
1. It seems that the whole exercise is voluntary, something he mentioned when I refused to provide the phone number.
2. I reminded him of the law on the management of personal information, but he was unable to tell me why they needed my passport details or how long they would be kept on file.
3. He claimed it was a random check but that they asked ‘people who seemed foreign’. I asked him to ask some Asian people next, and he said he would
The whole thing seemed like a training exercise, down to the silent sempai observing from ten metres away…
Posted in "Pinprick Protests", Fingerprinting, Targeting, Tracking NJ | 34 Comments »