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camera gets a match for a photograph from the database, an
    alert is automatically sent to the appropriate authorities. What had
    been primarily a psychological deterrent is now a potent anticrime and
    investigative tool."
    I knew of the existence of the software Tatsu was describing, of
    course. It was being tested in certain airports and stadiums,
    particularly in the United States, as a way of spotting and preempting
    known terrorists. But from what I'd read, the early tests had been
    disappointing. Or perhaps that was just disinformation. In any event,
    I hadn't known Japan was so far ahead in deployment.
    "The cameras are tied to Juki Net?" I asked.
    "Possibly," he answered in his dry way.
    Juki Net, a vast data snooping and centralization program, went live in
    August 2002, perhaps inspired by the U.S. Defense Department's Total
    Information Awareness Initiative. Juki Net assigns every Japanese
    citizen an eleven-digit identification number, and links that number to
    the person's name, sex, address, and date of birth. The government
    maintains that no other information will be compiled. Few people
    believe that, and there have already been abuses.
    I considered. As Tatsu noted, if word got out, the efficacy of the
    camera network would be compromised. But there was more.
    "Weren't there protests about Juki Net's introduction?" I asked.
    He nodded. "Yes. As you may know, the government introduced Juki Net
    without passing an accompanying privacy bill. Attempts to do so
    belatedly have been less than convincing. In Suginami-ku there is a
    boycott. Nonresidents are now seeking to establish an address in that
    ward to escape the system's dominion."
    Now I understood why the government would take such care to maintain
    the secrecy of Juki Net's connection to the network of security
    cameras. After all, even if you know it's there, avoiding video
    surveillance is hell, so the danger of inadvertently tipping off
    criminals would be a marginal problem. The real issue, no doubt, was
    the government's fear of the protests that would surely result if the
    public were to learn that the announced scope of the system was really
    only the tip of the iceberg. If the security cameras were tied
    together with Juki Net, people would rightly think they had a serious
    Big Brother situation on their hands.
    "You can't blame people for not trusting the government on this," I
    said. "I read somewhere that, last spring, the defense ministry got
    caught creating a database on people who had requested materials under
    the new Freedom of Information law, including information on their
    political views."
    He smiled his sad smile. "When the news broke, someone tried to delete
    the evidence."
    "I read about that. Didn't the LDP try to suppress a forty-page report
    on what had happened?"
    This time his smile was wry. "The Liberal Democratic Party officials
    involved in the attempted cover-up were punished, of course. They had
    their pay docked."
    "Now there's a deterrent to future abuses," I said, laughing.
    "Especially when you know they were greased with twice what got
    docked."
    He shrugged. "As a cop, I welcome Juki Net and the camera networks as
    a crime-fighting tool. As a citizen, I find it all appalling."
    "So why swear me to secrecy on this? Sounds like a few leaks would be
    just the thing."
    He cocked his head to the side, as though marveling at how my thinking
    could be so crude. "If such leaks were timed incorrectly," he said,
    'they would be as useless as a powerful but misplaced explosive
    charge."
    He was telling me he was up to something. He was also telling me not
    to ask.
    "So you used this network to find me," I said.
    "Yes. I kept the mug shots that were taken of you at Metropolitan
    Police Headquarters when you were detained after the incident outside
    of Yokosuka naval base. I had these photographs fed into the computer
    so that the network could look for you. I instructed the technicians
    to focus their initial efforts on Osaka.