April 2020 to March 2021

Yusuke Koizumi (Chief Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies)

   In this research, we conducted literature review and analysis on the following two themes and disseminated information and made recommendations internally and externally.

(1) Research on personal authentication services using facial recognition
  Improvement in the accuracy of facial recognition technology in recent years has led to the increased use of facial recognition in airports, retail stores, and various other settings. Currently, facial feature data of passengers are erased after each use at Narita Airport’s One ID system. In the future, however, with the consent of the individual, the data will likely be stored on the operator's server and deployed in certification authority businesses (personal authentication services) that use facial recognition technology. The data can then be continuously used not only at airports, but also at hotels, retail stores, car rental services, and leisure facilities. However, adequate social consensus in terms of privacy and other issues has not been reached regarding these certification authority businesses based on facial recognition. We, therefore, investigated trends in personal authentication services using face and other biometric data both in Japan and abroad and examined the approaches to gaining social consensus.

(2) Research on the protection of personal information in central bank digital currencies
  According to the Bank for International Settlements, 80% of central banks worldwide are engaging in central bank digital currency (CBDC) work. The Bank of Japan has released its own "Bank of Japan's Approach to Central Bank Digital Currency" in October 2020. The advantage of CBDC is that it is easy to prevent crimes such as tax evasion and money laundering because administrative bodies can verify the contents of the transaction. However, there are concerns that people's lives could be monitored by the government since individual transactions contain sensitive personal information. Therefore, in designing the CBDC system, it is essential to not only pursue the benefits of digitalization, but also to design the system to have built-in personal information protection in order for it to gain social acceptance. To this end, we investigated the personal information protection measures adopted in advanced cases overseas.