世論 What Japan Thinks

This short survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looked at the subject of biometric identification.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 22nd of December 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

Just about all the non-special permanent resident foreigners in Japan will have had experience with biometrics as we all get out fingerprints and face scanned at immigration, but this survey is about biometric identification, and as I understand it the machines can only identify people on immigration blacklists in real-time, it perhaps does an offline (2-day turn-around) scan of ordinary criminal records, but there are no reference prints to verify the average law-abiding non-citizen against.

Many of the newer mobile phones have face-identification for unlocking the phone, but even though mine has I’ve never tried it out for fear of locking myself out of my mobile!

Research results

Q1: Do you know what biometric identification is? (Sample size=300)

Yes	79.0%
Just heard the term	6.7%
Don’t know at all	14.3%

Q2: Have you ever used biometric identification? (Sample size=300)

Yes (to SQ)	19.3%
No	80.7%

Q2SQ: Which of the following biometric identification devices have you used? (Sample size=58)

	Votes	Percentage
Bank ATM	25	43.1%
Room entry management system	15	25.9%
Own computer	13	22.4%
Mobile device	12	20.7%
Work computer	10	17.2%
Other	4	6.9%