日本办公室监控技术走向极端

    日本电子巨头在手持设备之战输给韩国和美国之后，急需重塑自我。这一次，他们看来打算扮演守护神角色。

    日本最大的高科技公司正在利用国民对犯罪或恐怖主义的恐慌心理，投入巨资打造行政命令和控制、监视和边境检查系统。它的成果就是一系列极其复杂、令人难以想象的间谍和监视工具。

    “日本公司在开发创新性监控技术和实施方面已处在全球领先的地位，”加拿大皇后大学(University of Queens)在日本监控研究期刊《公司与政府监控》(Company/Governmental Surveillance)发布的一份研究报告这样写道。作为该领域的领导者，日本的NEC公司投入了10%的研发支出来开发这些系统。

    “传统上，日本政府一直热衷于保护和培育国内电子企业，希望它们成为日本经济发展的推动力，”日本关西大学( Kwansei University)监控研究员小岛清解释说。“所以，对于它们来说，在日本和中国的政治和军事紧张局势持续加深，公众深感担忧和恐惧之际，开发、推出更具侵入性的监控技术是件非常容易的事情。”

    不过，这也并不是日本公司的专属领地。电子侦察和监视设备的部署正在为世界各地的相关公司带来滚滚财源。根据高德纳咨询公司(Gartner)的研究，2012年，在“新威胁和新工作方式”的驱动下，全球安全软件市场增长了7.9%。

    然而，日本企业似乎正处于这个市场空间的先锋行列。最近在东京举行的一次NEC技术展上，我们看不到这家公司昔日的代表性产品，比如电脑显示器和笔记本电脑。取而代之的，是一些专门陈列数据监视和人脸识别系统的展台。NEC的营销口号声称，这些都是用来“保障生命和财产安全的技术。”

    这些引人注目的“安全解决方案”包括旨在窥探员工的方案（业内的行话叫“性能监控”），和一个被称为心理健康检查工具(Mental Health Check Tool)的应用程序。随着我们越来越习惯企业和国家利用“信息时代”的工具来审查我们的一言一行，用Facebook公司掌门人马克•扎克伯格的话说就是，隐私不再是一种社会规范。而日本的技术似乎正在向前迈出一大步：让企业监控我们的情绪。

    NEC开发的这种新型心理健康检查工具现已在好几家没有公开名称的日本蓝筹公司投入使用。这种基于电脑运行的工具不仅可以显示任何潜在的心理问题，还能够监视员工的心理稳定程度。这一点对于日本的管理者来说或许是不可或缺的，因为他们应对的是发达国家中最劳累、压力最大的劳动力群体之一（在富裕国家中，日本的自杀率仅次于韩国，员工流失率几乎是美国的两倍）。一份宣传单声称，这种检查工具可以跟工人的“考勤数据”协同运行，它的好处包括解决“生产力损失和白费的成本降低机会”等问题。

    日本的监视技术还包括检查火车站售票员笑容质量的工具，以及人脸识别广告板。早在2002年，日本的零售商就可以通过GPS技术跟踪销售人员。

    这些产品的推出既没有引发媒体一片哗然，也没有招致普通民众的抗议。一些人声称，对于雇主的这种顺从意味着，日本成为一个全面监控型社会的条件比大多数国家更加成熟。与之形成鲜明对比的是，美国国家安全局(NSA)曾经对美国公民实施大规模电子监控的消息一经披露立即引发美国社会各界强烈反弹。

    Having ceded the battle of the gadgets to Korea and the U.S., Japan's electronics titans need to reinvent themselves -- this time as our great protectors, apparently.

    Harnessing moral panics, such as fear of crime or terrorism, Japan's largest tech companies are growing and investing heavily in systems for executive command and control, surveillance, and border checks. The results are the most sophisticated spy and monitoring tools ever conceived.

    "Japanese companies are the leaders in creating innovative surveillance technology and implementation," according to a report from the University of Queens in Canada, published in Company/Governmental Surveillance in Japan, a journal of surveillance studies. Japan's NEC, a leader in the field, now dedicates 10% of its R&D spending to developing these systems.

    "Traditionally, Japanese governments have been keen to protect and cultivate domestic electronic companies so that they become the driving force for Japanese economic development," explains surveillance researcher Kiyoshi Abe at Kwansei University in Japan. "So it's easy for them to develop and introduce more invasive surveillance technology, utilizing public worry and fear around rising political-military tensions between Japan and China."

    Nor is this exclusively Japan Inc.'s agenda. Corporations worldwide are cashing in on deployment of electronic spying and monitoring. The global security software market grew 7.9% in 2012, according to research from Gartner, driven by "new threats and working practices."

    Japanese companies, however, appear to be among the vanguard in this space. At a recent NEC tech exhibition in Tokyo, absent were the computer monitors and laptops that once characterized the firm. In their place were booths dedicated to data surveillance and face recognition systems marketed as "technologies to safeguard lives and property."

    The eye-catching "safety solutions" include programs aimed at snooping on workers -- known as "performance monitoring" in the industry -- and an application dubbed the Mental Health Check Tool. As we grow accustomed to business and the state harnessing the tools of the Information Age to scrutinize everything we do and say -- privacy is no longer a social norm, claims Facebook's (FB) Mark Zuckerberg. Japanese technology, it seems, is going one step further: enabling corporations to monitor our feelings.

    Now in use by several undisclosed blue chip companies in Japan, NEC's new health tool is PC-based and can monitor the mental stability of a workforce while flagging any potential psychological problems. For Japanese management, this could prove indispensable, dealing, as they do, with one of the most overworked and stressed workforces in the developed world. (Japan is second only to South Korea in suicide rates among wealthy nations, suffering an attrition rate nearly double that of the U.S.). According to a promotional leaflet for the app, the check tool works in tandem with workers' "attendance data" and boasts benefits including addressing "lost productivity, and lost cost reduction."

    Japanese surveillance tech also includes tools to check on the quality of train station guards' smiles and face recognition ad boards. And retailers in Japan have tracked their salespeople with GPS tech since 2002.

    These products were introduced without much fuss in the media or protest from the general population. Such deference to employers, some argue, means Japan is riper than most for a total surveillance society. (By contrast, consider the outrage in the U.S. prompted by revelations thatthe NSA had engaged in widespread electronic surveillance of American citizens.)