[simonh]

It's a matter of what you can persuade people is reasonable. It's not surprising at all to me that pretty much all the people in the NSA think that dragnet surveillance is justifiable. In fact they clearly do think that. I have a much harder time believing that CIA agents would think it's ok to blow up the Twin Towers in order for George Bush's cronies to clean up on military contracts, for example.

[tkgally]

And in the case of the Japanese COVID figures, it’s not some single government agency, subject to pressure from above, that announces the infection totals. Hospitals and clinics throughout the country report infections they’ve identified to local government agencies, and those local government agencies put the data on their websites, from which the media get them. The Tokyo site is at [1] and the Tokushima Prefecture site is at [2], for example; NHK’s compilation site is at [3].

There are many people working throughout health care and government who would get very angry if they learned that the figures were being artificially suppressed, and there is an independent press that would be eager to report on it. And now that many prefectures are reporting zero cases and deaths on most days, if some people there had in fact been recently infected or had died, they or their families would notice the discrepancy and raise a stink, too.

I live in a Japan, and it is a relief that, at least for the moment, the infections have dropped so low. The nationwide figure on Monday was 50 new infections, the lowest in a year and a half. I doubt, though, if anyone who follows the news from Europe believes we’re necessarily out of the woods yet.

[1] https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en

[2] https://www.pref.tokushima.lg.jp/foreignlanguage

[3] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/coronavirus/