Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday instructed a minister to craft a bill to boost Japan's "active cyber defense" capabilities to prevent cyberattacks against the country by monitoring early warning signs.
"It is an increasingly urgent task to enhance Japan's ability to deal with cyberattacks in light of the current security environment," Kishida said at the first meeting of a government panel involving experts in the field.
As the government aims to submit the bill to parliament as early as an extraordinary session in the fall, Digital Minister Taro Kono, who attended the gathering, requested that the panel members report their findings within a few months.
Active cyber defense is an approach to observe and detect signs of cyberattacks and, if necessary, disrupt enemy servers with computer viruses to neutralize them. However, there are concerns that this approach may violate the constitutional guarantee of communication secrecy.
At the panel meeting, which included 17 experts such as specialists on cybersecurity and lawyers, Kono said it is necessary to achieve a system comparable to those of the United States and European nations while protecting the people's rights and interests.
