Simon Sharwood reports:
Japan’s minister for digital transformation and digital reform, Taro Kono, has apologized after a government app breached citizens’ privacy.
The app is called the “Certificate Issuing Server” and, as explained by the municipal government of Kodaira City, allows residents to print documents such as certificates that prove they’ve paid taxes.
Fujitsu Japan developed and operates the service, which preps PDF files in response to user requests and then despatches them to printers in convenience stores. The service is not universal: local governments opt in to deploy it.
Convenience stores host multifunction printers to produce the documents. As convenience stores are utterly ubiquitous across Japan, the service is a very … erm … convenient way to access government documents.
Or it would be, if the app weren’t printing the wrong documents.
Read more at The Register.