This article’s discussion is on the legal issues of automatic data processing for national information gathering during criminal procedures in Japan and Germany. The author deals with each individual case about a role of automatic data processing in Japan and Germany. Japanese’s case is the issue on “specific computer” in Lawful Interception Act, on the other hand, Germany’s one is “electronic tagging” in Criminal Law. To conclude, it becomes clear that automatic data processing in criminal procedures has two important legal functions. One of the functions is improvement of convenience for national government, the other is protecting human rights in criminal procedures. Furthermore, the article shows a systematic framework for thinking a legal evaluation related to the technical methods which have only neutral character essentially.

In this paper, the author examines the legal theory concerning the determination of the existence and identity of the person depicted in computer graphics (CG), based on a lawsuit in which the applicability of CG images to child pornography was disputed. Under Japan’s child pornography regulations, which require the existence of the subject child, there is a difficulty in proving the existence of the child when she/he cannot be identified. Furthermore, with the development of technologies such as deepfake and virtual human that generate quite realistic images, it has become more difficult to prove the existence of the depicted person solely from the image or video expression itself. In light of such situation, the author pointed out the scope of this lawsuit and future issues regarding the legal evaluation of human figures in CG.

In the U.S., the theory of fiduciary duty or privacy as trust is widely asserted as the basis for the right to privacy, and it influences theories in Japan. However, the theory of fiduciary duty is criticized in the U.S., and there are critical views regarding its introduction to Japan due to differences in the institutional backgrounds of the U.S. and Japan. Therefore, introducing the theory to Japan requires careful consideration in light of the differences between the institutional backgrounds of the U.S. and Japan. This paper takes the position that it is difficult to introduce the U.S. theory as it is into Japan at the present time. Rather, it is important to consider what suggestions can be obtained from the theory. In particular, the theory of fiduciary duty provides useful suggestions for the pluralistic theory of the right to privacy, which is becoming more and more popular in Japan.

The concept of electronic signatures in the Law on Electronic Signatures and the meaning of the presumed effect of the Law were discussed intensively, not least in the so-called Article 2 Q&A and Article 3 Q&A published by the Government in 2020. However, their contents are insufficient in terms of content, as they completely ignore comparative legal analysis at the time of enactment. As there was sufficient comparative legal analysis at the time of enactment, the interpretation of electronic signatures needs to be made with a focus on international provisions and consistency. In such a case, the following features are to be observed: the analysis should be made from the signatory; the interpretation of the four requirements of the advanced electronic signature is consistent with the interpretation of the presumption effect; the person in Article 3 refers to the signatory; and the concept of electronic signature does not include the identity proofing with the actual entity. However, after looking at the provisions of the statute, the fruitfulness of the discussion is questionable and a discussion on the legal regulation of electronic identification in electronic transactions would be more useful.

A ransom (ransomware) attack is defined as a cyber-attack that attempts to extort money (as ransom) in exchange for the recovery of data on the attacked terminal by using a malicious program called ransomware to encrypt the data. This paper attempts to advance the interpretation of ransomware attacks and law as they bring hard cases to the Personal Information Protection Act, the Civil Code, and the Company Act, and also discusses the development of the framework and proposes future lawmaking by applying the issue of ransomware attacks to the discussion framework of information security and law.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into the privacy sandbox on 8 January 2021, and in the course of that investigation, Google has been asked to establish extensive commitments that CMA and ICO shall be involved in relation to the design, development, implementation and testing of the proposal, testing of alternative technologies, and it allows the CMA's involvement with respect to monitoring and compliance, and to take certain steps to improve transparency through various public disclosures and consultations with third parties. These commitments brought the investigation to a close, but the course of the investigation has once again revealed the inadequacy of previous discussions on what privacy is, its relationship with data protection, its intersecting relationship with competition and the implications of the ecosystem.