> As long as you trust your gov.... I think Japan is probably in better relations with its citizens than most countries...

I'd trust any democratic government doing a preventative security scan for vulnerable devices, over some hacker who's only out to exploit them for personal gain.

Most people have never patched their router nor even know how to. Someone needs to proactively inform that group that they're vulnerable, at scale, if we're even going to have a chance to solve a lot of network problems.

Why do we have to choose? Personally I don't trust either.

If you're competent enough to manage your digital security, you're fine (99% of the population isn't). If you're not, you're endangering the society you live in (by providing attackers with a device they can use). That's one way of looking at it.

You can't nicely ask the hacker not to do it. The hackers are constantly scanning the internet regardless of what you want.

Same goes for most Governments though.

Well, if you keep insecure stuff available to the world, you're trusting everyone with it, including every government.

Precisely.

It depends on what kind of actions they wish to do with the resulting scan/hack.

If they offer services to secure people/companies free or cheaply, then its a overall large positive.

If they give it to their equivalent NSA apparatus, that's a major bad.

Agree. Skillset and response will determine the success. Japan govt has a good precedence of centralized security scanning for country’s Internet, so hopefully it is a positive.

Vast majority of Internet users are not security savvy. Doing a baseline scan with appropriate remediation guidance will go a long way.

Given that they are announcing it instead of doing it secretly they seem to be starting with the right foot...

I'm pretty sure security researchers will set up honeypots and monitor what the government probes are doing.

Arguably, if you don't trust the government, you wouldn't rely on them giving you a warning in the first place.

You don't need to trust the government - just secure your devices and they won't be able to get in. It's not like they are requiring that you supply them passwords - they are hacking into your devices the same way anyone else in the world can.

Id trust them more than my own government just by them admitting that they are doing it. The US government for example would never admit to hacking random people's shit, but we know they can and that they do and they have been exposed doing even more shady shit without oversight and with zero public reports about it. Instead we get PR campaigns to try and cover up the shit that got leaked.

The person you say "yes" to now isn't the same person you will say "yes" to in 10 years.

You can trust the government's intentions while still being wary of the unintended consequences of a policy.

They are admitting they are going to do it. They didn't have to tell anybody.

Based on what I've heard from some natives I befriended online, there is allegedly rampant corruption, many people don't really trust the government, and there's a big problem with organize crime (the Yakuza). I'll note that I'm not Japanese and I've never lived in Japan, so I am unable to ascertain the veracity of this claim, thus I would suggest taking this statement with a gigantic grain of salt.

Invalid logic. If you don't trust the government then you probably assume they're already accessing your information.

Most countries? How is that a good benchmark when most countries are dictatures? Compare with the best, if anything.