The Public Security Intelligence Agency (公安調査庁, kōanchōsa-chō) is the national intelligence agency of Japan. It is administered by the Ministry of Justice in the government of Japan, and is tasked with internal security and espionage against threats to Japanese national security based on the Subversive Activities Prevention Act and the Act Regarding the Control of Organizations Which Committed Indiscriminate Mass Murder. Any investigation conducted by the agency needs to go through the Public Security Examination Commission (PSEC) in order to determine if there is a justification to investigate and clamp down on an organization's activities.
As the national agency with the role to collect intelligence information, the PSIA contributes to Japanese government policy by providing relevant organizations with necessary foreign and domestic data (collected through investigations and intelligence activities) on subversive organizations. It is also known that the PSIA is responsible for conducting surveillance and intelligence-related work on Zainichi Koreans on Japanese soil.
The PSIA's findings are released publicly through the annually-published Naigai Jousei no Kaiko to Tenbo (Situation in Public Security inside and outside Japan and their prospect) as well as regularly-published Kokusai Terrorism Youran (International Terrorism Report).
According to Philip H.J. Davies and Kristian Gustafson, the PSIA operates similarly to the British security agency MI5 since officers have no rights to arrest anyone during a law enforcement operation nor force anyone to be involved in an investigation.
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