The first reports issued by the Diet boards overseeing state secrets have proven, as had been widely feared, that their power is so weak that it's almost impossible for them to effectively check abuse of the state secrets law by government offices. The Diet should seriously consider giving teeth to its boards in both chambers. This is all the more important since the boards, made up of elected officials, represent the only mechanism outside of the administrative branch to prevent arbitrary designation of government information as state secrets.

Apart from the Diet boards, the government has set up a supervisory committee within the Cabinet secretariat, made up of vice minister-level bureaucrats from each ministry and headed by the chief Cabinet secretary, and a senior bureaucrat in the Cabinet Office with experience serving as a public prosecutor to check whether the designation of state secrets and their management are being done properly. But these functions are performed by government insiders, raising doubts on whether they can effectively prevent misuse by their peers.

The decision to set up the Diet boards was made in a rush just before the law was enacted in December 2013. Each Diet chamber has since set up a panel comprising eight members, with party representation determined by partisan strength in each chamber. The Lower House board is made up of five members from the Liberal Democratic Party, two from the Democratic Party and one from Komeito. The Upper House version has four lawmakers from the LDP, two from the Democratic Party and one each from Komeito and the Japanese Communist Party.