Japan’s government adopted Tuesday a draft antistalking law amendment that prohibits the act of collecting location information abusing loss prevention tags and enables police to issue warnings against stalkers without requests from victims.
It hopes to get the bill enacted during the ongoing extraordinary session of the Diet, or Japan’s parliament, which is slated to run through Dec. 17.
Loss prevention tags, which emit signals that are picked up by nearby smartphones to obtain location information, can be used to track individuals without their consent.
While a 2021 revision of the antistalking law banned people from obtaining without consent location information using GPS devices, loss prevention tags were out of the scope of the regulation as they use a different method to transmit information.
Consultations with police regarding suspected abuse of loss prevention tags totaled 370 cases last year, double the level for 2023.
