One person's definition of public security will not be the same as another's. Concepts of what constitutes the peace, safety and order of society -- and perhaps more importantly, what endangers them -- also change at different periods of history. With the Cold War long over, however, most unbiased observers would not consider Japan's fledgling volunteer citizens' action groups, private ombudsmen's groups and private organizations of writers and journalists to pose any threat to the nation. The government's Public Security Investigation Agency apparently does not agree.

The revelation by a Japanese news service that three years ago the agency, which is affiliated with the Justice Ministry, issued written instructions to its eight regional bureaus to keep an eye on the activities of a long list of such groups is deeply disturbing. At least it is to those who recognize that constant vigilance by the citizenry, not by the police, is the necessary price of democratic freedoms. Unfortunately, memories grow dim as generations with personal experience of World War II age and die. Many people alive today, however, remember well the activities, the excesses, of the nation's wartime "thought police."

There can be no justification today for conducting surreptitious surveillance of such private organizations as the Japan Congress of Journalists and the Japan P.E.N. Club. And what could possibly be the reasoning behind the agency's monitoring of volunteer citizens' groups dealing with the major social problems of school bullying and the growing numbers of children who refuse to attend school? For that matter, what business is it of the Public Security Investigation Agency to pry into the affairs of groups that seek to improve what many observers see as the second-class position of women in Japan, or even of those opposed to an increase in the consumption tax?