I almost missed this fascinating story in The Times (of London) on how Google Earth found itself in hot water in Japan by allowing (with some modfications) to map discrimation against the burakumin caste, which is one of the main social minority groups in the country. It’s not the first time that online maps have been used – and, most importantly, abused, as the Times story makes clear – to document the exact position of ethnic minorities in a city (see this excellent post from Paul Goble on how Russian nationalists have done the same thing in the Russian city of Volgograd).
However, the case of the burakumin is even more interesting, as it involves a controversial subject that is a few hundred years old and maps could provide enough information to identify those belonging to the caste and then discriminate against them (the fear of identification is great among the Burakins – many companies refuse to hire them and some even hire private detectives to run adequate background checks).