Records seized from Google on YouTube poster of collision videos+

TOKYO, Nov. 9 Kyodo -
Japanese prosecutors seized on Tuesday records from the operator of the YouTube
video-sharing website that may help identify who made public on the site videos
of the September collisions between two Japanese patrol boats and a Chinese
fishing boat in disputed waters, investigative sources said.
Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office seized the
records from YouTube LLC, a unit of Internet search engine giant Google Inc. of
the United States, based on a search warrant, the sources said. Google had
reportedly indicated it would be difficult to voluntarily release such records,
citing privacy protection rules.
Earlier Tuesday, Tokyo police began questioning Japan Coast Guard officials and
asked the maritime police force to submit results on its in-house investigation
into how the video footage that had been kept by Japanese law-enforcement
authorities came to be released on the Internet, the sources said.
On Monday, the Japan Coast Guard filed complaints both with the Metropolitan
Police Department and prosecutors against unidentified suspects for violating a
law that requires government employees to preserve confidential information
they obtained through work as well as the unauthorized computer access law over
the video footage case.
Japan Coast Guard Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki told a Diet committee session
Tuesday his agency lodged the complaints with the police and prosecutors
because an analysis of computer data requires a huge amount of work and there
were limits to what the Coast Guard can do in an in-house probe.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday it has set up a
joint investigative team with the Okinawa prefectural police. The disputed
waters are near Senkaku Islands, administered by Japan and claimed also by
China, in Okinawa Prefecture.
The Tokyo police plan to send investigators to the Coast Guard's Ishigaki
office on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Prefecture, near the Senkakus, to question
officials there who edited the footage and to analyze computer access records,
police sources said.
The Japan Coast Guard has already sent about a dozen personnel to its Ishigaki
office for investigations.
All the officials questioned in the Ishigaki office have denied any involvement
in the leakage of the video footage, the sources said.
Six video clips totaling about 44 minutes in length were found posted on
YouTube several days after a separate edited version of a video lasting less
than seven minutes was shown to a limited number of parliamentarians on Nov. 1.
The edited videos were submitted to the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office.
Investigative sources said there was no evidence to show that CD-Rs onto which
the edited version of the footage was recorded had been leaked from the Japan
Coast Guard offices.
It is highly likely that Japan Coast Guard officers used other memory devices,
such as USB memory sticks, to copy the footage, and some of them might have
been released, they said.
The Coast Guard's Ishigaki office has about 140 staff members, of whom around
100 are crew of patrol ships. Due to the relatively small staff size, it is
easily noticeable if a stranger comes into the office, according to a senior
Coast Guard official.
The Japan Coast Guard arrested the skipper of the Chinese fishing boat on
suspicion of obstructing public duties by deliberately hitting one of the Coast
Guard patrol boats, leading to a diplomatic dispute with China.
The captain was later released, but tensions between the two countries remain
over the incident.
==Kyodo
2010-11-09 23:53:26