Japanese Carrier Will No Longer Tell Customers If They’re Being Tracked

When it comes to your information there is a lot that can be used against you, most of which you provide freely to social media and mobile apps. One piece of information you want to keep private all the time is your location, something that is protected all the time. The same was true in Japan until June last year when the law in Japan was changed enabling providers like NTT DoCoMo to track and provide their customer’s locations to the government without saying a word.

The change in the law meant that the requirement to gather subscribers permissions was required before sharing sensitive information such as people’s GPS data. With this in mind, the five new phones that NTT DoCoMo released on Tuesday give the authorities instant access to the phone holders location. Some of the new phones that will allow instant tracking are the Galaxy S7 Edge, Xperia X Performance, and Aquos Zeta with current handsets getting a firmware update at some point in the future to enable silent tracking.

While NTT have stated that they have previously provided GPS data in times of “crisis”, meaning that while it’s not new for them to share your information, doing so without your knowledge or permission is a big step in tracking people in real time, even if they claim it will require permission given the courts.