Spied On At Japan's Train Stations

It's been revealed that a Japanese company has used images taken at several stations in the Tokyo area as part of project for JR East to track passenger flow then used these same images as part of two government studies without the consent of the people involved or JR East.

  The commuter images taken by Kyoto-based Omron were obtained by installing about 10 cameras each at four train stations. The stations were Atami Station in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, Sakuragicho Station in Yokohama, and Itabashi and Kokubunji stations in Tokyo. Omron said it installed the cameras to examine passenger flow at the request of JR East.

Omron was required under the contract to dispose of these images instead they turned them over for use in two government studies.

Omron ended up using the image data in a project with an affiliate of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry from 2006 to 2010 to develop a system to track people who pass through ticket gates without paying and people who start fights or roam.
Omron pocketed about ¥250 million from the ministry for participating in the project.

 Just another reason why governments should not have unfettered access to your personal information and be allowed to use it in ways that violate the rights of the people unwittingly involved in this study.