Japan’s Supreme Court in June ordered Twitter to delete specific tweets related to a theft case that occurred more than eight years ago. The plaintiff is a man arrested for breaking into a woman’s dressing room in a traditional Japanese hotel and fined JPY 100,000 (USD 810). His actual name was published in several news articles and tweeted by many Twitter users in connection with the news.
During the litigation, all media outlets had removed the news articles and disabled any links related to the case, but many tweets, including headlines with the plaintiff’s name and links to deleted news stories, remained.
Tomokazu Suwa, of the lawyer at Nozomi Sogo Attorneys at Law in Tokyo, said that initially, the Tokyo High Court tried to apply a “clearly exceeded” test to Twitter, which the Supreme Court had previously applied to Google in 2017 when a plaintiff asked the tech company to delete certain URLs, website titles and snippets from search results. At the time, the court ruled that the deletion of search results could only be permitted when the importance of protecting privacy clearly outweighed that of disclosing the information.
“The Supreme Court of Japan overturned the decision of the Tokyo High Court and confirmed that a private person has a personal right not to disclose private information without an adequate reason,” Suwa said.
“The Supreme Court of Japan found that the ‘clearly exceeded’ test does not apply to Twitter. Consequently, the Supreme Court of Japan ruled that the plaintiff can take legal action and Twitter must delete these tweets if the plaintiff’s interest in not disclosed private information outweighs any other reason these posts should be publicly available on Twitter.
Suwa explained that the Supreme Court applied a totality of circumstances analysis, noting that a person’s arrest history is private information. Although this information was of public interest at the time it was tweeted, eight years have now passed from the time of his arrest to the conclusion of oral argument in the Tokyo High Court case.
Pursuant to Article 34-2 of the Japanese Penal Code, the plaintiff’s sentence has already lapsed after he has completed a fine and five years have passed without another fine or a greater sentence being imposed.
The Supreme Court also saw that the purpose of the tweets related to the plaintiff’s case appeared to serve as “breaking news,” not to keep the news available for an extended period. However, if someone searches for the plaintiff’s name on Twitter, headlines about his arrest will appear.
“If this decision by the Supreme Court of Japan regarding Twitter does not reverse its decision regarding Google, it seems likely to conclude that the rules applicable to the deletion of private information are likely to be interpreted differently between various platforms in Japan,” said Suwa.
