Sony not allowed to turn PSN on in Japan

Have a Japanese PSN account? Noticed you haven't been able to access it, despite being able to access US and European accounts? There's a reason.

Japanese authorities have halted Sony's attempt to turn PSN on in its homeland because it believes promised security countermeasures are "incomplete".

"We met with Sony on 6th May and 13th, and basically we want two things from them," Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told Dow Jones Newswires.

"The first is preventative measures. As of 13th May, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the 1st May press conference."

Exactly what the preventative measures are remain a secret for security reasons.

The second demand is said to revolve around how Sony hopes to regain consumer confidence over personal data, such as credit card information.

Is the Japanese government simply being overly cautious, or should our government have imposed a similar restriction?

"There were similar cases in the past that were caused by other firms, and we are asking Sony whether their measures are good enough when compared to countermeasures taken in the past," Nobutani continued.

PSN had been offline since 20th April following the security breach that left personal information tied to some 77 million user accounts compromised and the details of around 12.3 million credit card possibly stolen.

In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office, the independent watchdog set up to make sure companies adequately protect our data, is in talks with Sony to determine whether the Japanese company was in breach of the Data Protection Act. If found guilty it faces a fine of up to half a million pounds.