This submission aims to contribute to the Human Rights Committee’s (“the Committee”) upcoming review of Japan’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR or “the Covenant”). It focuses on the abuse of children’s rights by education technologies (EdTech) endorsed by the Japanese government for online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the transgender legal recognition process, the death penalty and criminal justice, and child abuse in sport. It is submitted to the Human Rights Committee in advance of its review of Japan at the Committee’s 136th session.
Children’s Rights Abuses by Government-Endorsed Online Learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic (articles 17, 18, and 19)
In a global investigation of education technology (EdTech) products endorsed by the world’s most populous countries for children’s education during the Covid-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch found that the Japanese government violated children’s right to privacy and other rights.[1]
Of the EdTech products that were recommended by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) on March 2, 2020, Human Rights Watch randomly selected for analysis ten EdTech products that would serve as an illustrative sample of MEXT’s decisions.[2] These were Asahi Shimbun, Cisco Webex, eboard, Flying ClassRoom, Happy Lilac, LINE, NHK for School, schoolTakt, Study Sapuri, and Z-Kai.[3] Of these ten products, two were mobile applications (“apps”), six were websites, and two were available in both formats.
Our analysis found that nine out of ten of these EdTech products surveilled or had the capacity to surveil children online, outside school hours, and deep into their private lives. Built by private companies, these EdTech products installed invasive tracking technologies on children’s devices that harvested data on who children are, where children are, who their family and friends are, and what kind of device their family could afford for them to use.
Human Rights Watch also found that seven of these EdTech products transmitted children’s personal data to advertising technology (AdTech) companies, and two products had the capability to do so.
Finding Out Who Children Are
Three EdTech products authorized by MEXT for children’s use had the capability to collect their users’ Android Advertising IDs, allowing them to tag, collectively, an estimated 1.5 million users and uniquely identify their devices for the sole purpose of advertising to them.[4] Another two EdTech products digitally fingerprinted children using invasive techniques that were impossible to avoid or protect against without throwing the device away.[5]
These identifiers enabled companies to infer the interests and characteristics of individual children for commercial purposes. Every time a child connects to the internet and comes into contact with tracking technology, any information collected about that child is tied back to the identifier associated with them by that company, resulting in a comprehensive profile over time. Data tied together in this way do not need a real name to be able to target a real child or person.
Neither the government nor these five EdTech companies disclosed their use of these tracking techniques. Human Rights Watch finds that these tracking techniques are neither proportionate nor necessary for these products to function, or to deliver educational content to children. Their use on children in an educational setting arbitrarily interferes with children’s right to privacy.
Tracking Where Children Are
Information about a child’s physical location also reveals powerfully intimate details about their life far beyond their coordinates. Once collected, these data points can reveal sensitive information such as where a child lives and where they go to school; even without names or other obviously identifiable information, it is startlingly easy to identify real children and people without their awareness and consent.
Human Rights Watch found that two apps recommended by MEXT for children’s learning had the ability to collect precise location data, or GPS coordinates, that can identify a user’s exact location to within 4.9 meters.[6] Both apps also had the ability to collect the time of the device’s current location, as well as the last known location of the device-revealing exactly where a user is, where they were before that, and how long they stayed at each place.
At a time when many children were remotely learning from home under Covid-19 lockdowns, the surveillance of their physical presence through location data likely revealed addresses and places most significant to them.
Tracking Who Children Know
Two apps recommended by MEXT for children’s use had the ability to collect information about their users’ friends, family, and other acquaintances by accessing the contacts list saved on users’ phones.[7]