Thinking about visiting Japan? You might want to think twice. Starting tomorrow, they’re going to start fingerprinting foreigners again at immigrations. By foreigners I mean tourists, students and business workers with valid visas, and even permanent residents. It’s expected that the lines at immigration will now take at least an hour, whereas those with visas and permanent residence could previously bypass the long and understaffed “foreigners” line. If this isn’t egregious enough, the fingerprints get stored in a database for an “unspecified time” (read: forever) and are available to every local police station and foreign government that requests them. Framing someone for a crime has never been easier!

Apparently they used to do this awhile back until the human rights groups (like Amnesty International) made a stink, and the law was repealed in 2000. But someone dropped the word “terrorism” and everyone’s brains magically turned off. It doesn’t matter that Japan has never been the target of a foreign terrorist attack. Remember the sarin nerve gas attack on the subway? Japanese radicals. Japanese Red Army attacks back in the 70’s? Oh, that’s right, those were attacks BY Japanese terrorists on foreign soil. Oops. Maybe I’m just dense, but I simply cannot see the connection between foreigners in Japan and terrorism.

Previous proposed legislation to fingerprint all Japanese citizens has been met with outrage. So why do they think it’s any more acceptable to do it to a smaller group of law-abiding people? I’m not a criminal. If Japan is going to treat me like one, it’s tempting to just not come back.

Edit: (I should make a note that Slashdot also posted my submission about this, so you can read the comments there as well.)