ID :
149450
Thu, 11/11/2010 - 02:35
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/149450
The shortlink copeid
Coast Guard member to be arrested over posted collision video+
TOKYO, Nov. 11 Kyodo -
Police plan to arrest as early as Thursday a Japan Coast Guard member who
confessed Wednesday to having posted on the Internet a video of collisions
between a Chinese trawler and Japanese patrol boats near the disputed Senkaku
Islands on suspicion of breaching confidentiality, investigative sources said.
Meanwhile, the Kobe Coast Guard Office to which the 43-year-old maritime police
officer belongs, and the 5th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters that supervises
the Kobe office, have been flooded with hundreds of e-mail messages and phone
calls from the public, almost all of them in support of him, since police began
questioning the officer earlier Wednesday, the offices said.
His arrest over an incident that strained ties between Japan and China is
likely to complicate Prime Minister Naoto Kan's efforts at improving them and
raise questions about his government's control over sensitive information.
The Tokyo police questioned the chief navigator of a patrol boat attached to
the Kobe Coast Guard Office on Wednesday night on suspicion of violating a law
banning public servants from divulging knowledge obtained through work.
They will continue questioning him on Thursday, the sources said.
While the sources said the crew member has indicated he obtained the video on
his own and released it, it remains unclear how he could have gotten hold of
the material given that the Kobe office was not involved in the investigation
into the collision incident.
A senior investigator said that in order to arrest him, it will be necessary to
prove that the leaked material was confidential enough to require
confidentiality obligation.
On a possible motive, a man who appeared to be the chief navigator had said
that the public has the right to know what happened in the incident, Nippon
Television Network reported during a news program Wednesday evening, drawing on
reports by Yomiuri Telecasting, an affiliate in Osaka.
''That shouldn't be hidden,'' the man was quoted by a Yomiuri Telecasting
reporter who allegedly interviewed him in the city of Kobe as telling him.
''Unless I resorted to such an act, (the incident) would have been discarded
into the dark without a trace. The public has the right to watch this video.''
The man also noted that any Coast Guard member could gain access to the video
and that it had not been handled as confidential material, according to the
report.
Nippon Television did not broadcast a video of the interview itself because he
allegedly agreed to be interviewed on condition the video would be aired only
after his arrest.
The clips posted on the YouTube video-sharing website were the same video the
Ishigaki Coast Guard Office in Okinawa Prefecture had handed over to
prosecutors. The video has been stored at the office, which investigated the
collision incident, and several prosecutors' offices in the country.
Coast Guard Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki told the House of Representatives Budget
Committee earlier that he was briefed that the crew member had confessed to the
captain of the patrol boat Uranami while on board around 9 a.m. The ship
subsequently returned to Kobe.
''I let it out,'' the crew member was quoted by the sources as telling the
captain.
The chief navigator has been assigned to the Kobe office since April and was
off duty Nov. 4, when the video clips were posted online, Coast Guard sources
said, adding that he had never been assigned to offices in Okinawa.
Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku indicated that Coast Guard
chief Suzuki would not come out of the video footage incident unhurt, telling a
news conference that he bears heavy responsibilities ''in exchange for the
powerful authority given to him.''
A government source said Suzuki's resignation will be inevitable.
Sengoku declined to lay the blame on members of Kan's Cabinet, including
transport minister Sumio Mabuchi, who supervises the Coast Guard, saying
leaders in ''political and administrative positions'' execute their
responsibilities differently.
Later in the day, Kan instructed top bureaucrats at ministries and agencies to
have their officials maintain discipline so that similar information leaks
would not recur.
The crew member's confession came after investigators analyzed records seized
from the Japan unit of Google Inc., which operates YouTube, and found that the
video in question was uploaded from a personal computer at an Internet cafe in
the western Japanese city of Kobe. Investigators plan to analyze the security
videos obtained from the cafe to identify the sender, the investigative sources
said.
The alleged leak by the patrol boat crew shocked the Coast Guard, with a senior
Coast Guard official expressing regrets about not being able to make the video
public before it was leaked by an insider.
''He works diligently and is an easy-going person,'' a 59-year-old Coast Guard
member said of his colleague in question. ''I'm surprised because he doesn't
come off as someone who would do risky things.''
A member of the Ishigaki office said he shed tears when he learned of the
alleged confession of the leak by a Coast Guard member, while another member
with extensive experience in border patrol said the video contained nothing
that would have caused problems even if it were disclosed to the public.
A set of six video clips totaling about 44 minutes were posted on the
video-sharing website on Nov. 4 by someone with the account name ''sengoku38.''
The clips contained scenes of the collisions showing that the Chinese fishing
boat had rammed into Coast Guard vessels.
Even though the clips were deleted the following day, the video rapidly spread
in cyberspace and was shown on TV on numerous occasions, effectively negating
the Japanese government's policy of keeping the video from the public out of
apparent concern it could provoke China.
Only a version lasting less than seven minutes had been shown to a limited
number of lawmakers a few days earlier.
Following the leak, China urged Japan not to prevent bilateral ties from being
repaired.
The posting prompted the Coast Guard to file criminal complaints with the Tokyo
police and prosecutors on Monday on suspicion of a possible breach of the
National Public Service Law and the Unauthorized Computer Access Law.
The prosecutors used a search warrant to seize the records from Google on
Tuesday after the company reportedly indicated it would be difficult to
voluntarily release such records due to its privacy policy.
Following the Sept. 7 collisions in the East China Sea, the Coast Guard
arrested the Chinese fishing boat's skipper on suspicion of ramming into one of
its Coast Guard ships near the disputed islands, heightening tensions between
the two largest Asian economies.
As political and diplomatic pressure mounted for the immediate release of the
captain, which the Chinese government had pressed for strongly, prosecutors
freed him Sept. 25 pending further investigation. He subsequently returned to
China.
==Kyodo
Police plan to arrest as early as Thursday a Japan Coast Guard member who
confessed Wednesday to having posted on the Internet a video of collisions
between a Chinese trawler and Japanese patrol boats near the disputed Senkaku
Islands on suspicion of breaching confidentiality, investigative sources said.
Meanwhile, the Kobe Coast Guard Office to which the 43-year-old maritime police
officer belongs, and the 5th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters that supervises
the Kobe office, have been flooded with hundreds of e-mail messages and phone
calls from the public, almost all of them in support of him, since police began
questioning the officer earlier Wednesday, the offices said.
His arrest over an incident that strained ties between Japan and China is
likely to complicate Prime Minister Naoto Kan's efforts at improving them and
raise questions about his government's control over sensitive information.
The Tokyo police questioned the chief navigator of a patrol boat attached to
the Kobe Coast Guard Office on Wednesday night on suspicion of violating a law
banning public servants from divulging knowledge obtained through work.
They will continue questioning him on Thursday, the sources said.
While the sources said the crew member has indicated he obtained the video on
his own and released it, it remains unclear how he could have gotten hold of
the material given that the Kobe office was not involved in the investigation
into the collision incident.
A senior investigator said that in order to arrest him, it will be necessary to
prove that the leaked material was confidential enough to require
confidentiality obligation.
On a possible motive, a man who appeared to be the chief navigator had said
that the public has the right to know what happened in the incident, Nippon
Television Network reported during a news program Wednesday evening, drawing on
reports by Yomiuri Telecasting, an affiliate in Osaka.
''That shouldn't be hidden,'' the man was quoted by a Yomiuri Telecasting
reporter who allegedly interviewed him in the city of Kobe as telling him.
''Unless I resorted to such an act, (the incident) would have been discarded
into the dark without a trace. The public has the right to watch this video.''
The man also noted that any Coast Guard member could gain access to the video
and that it had not been handled as confidential material, according to the
report.
Nippon Television did not broadcast a video of the interview itself because he
allegedly agreed to be interviewed on condition the video would be aired only
after his arrest.
The clips posted on the YouTube video-sharing website were the same video the
Ishigaki Coast Guard Office in Okinawa Prefecture had handed over to
prosecutors. The video has been stored at the office, which investigated the
collision incident, and several prosecutors' offices in the country.
Coast Guard Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki told the House of Representatives Budget
Committee earlier that he was briefed that the crew member had confessed to the
captain of the patrol boat Uranami while on board around 9 a.m. The ship
subsequently returned to Kobe.
''I let it out,'' the crew member was quoted by the sources as telling the
captain.
The chief navigator has been assigned to the Kobe office since April and was
off duty Nov. 4, when the video clips were posted online, Coast Guard sources
said, adding that he had never been assigned to offices in Okinawa.
Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku indicated that Coast Guard
chief Suzuki would not come out of the video footage incident unhurt, telling a
news conference that he bears heavy responsibilities ''in exchange for the
powerful authority given to him.''
A government source said Suzuki's resignation will be inevitable.
Sengoku declined to lay the blame on members of Kan's Cabinet, including
transport minister Sumio Mabuchi, who supervises the Coast Guard, saying
leaders in ''political and administrative positions'' execute their
responsibilities differently.
Later in the day, Kan instructed top bureaucrats at ministries and agencies to
have their officials maintain discipline so that similar information leaks
would not recur.
The crew member's confession came after investigators analyzed records seized
from the Japan unit of Google Inc., which operates YouTube, and found that the
video in question was uploaded from a personal computer at an Internet cafe in
the western Japanese city of Kobe. Investigators plan to analyze the security
videos obtained from the cafe to identify the sender, the investigative sources
said.
The alleged leak by the patrol boat crew shocked the Coast Guard, with a senior
Coast Guard official expressing regrets about not being able to make the video
public before it was leaked by an insider.
''He works diligently and is an easy-going person,'' a 59-year-old Coast Guard
member said of his colleague in question. ''I'm surprised because he doesn't
come off as someone who would do risky things.''
A member of the Ishigaki office said he shed tears when he learned of the
alleged confession of the leak by a Coast Guard member, while another member
with extensive experience in border patrol said the video contained nothing
that would have caused problems even if it were disclosed to the public.
A set of six video clips totaling about 44 minutes were posted on the
video-sharing website on Nov. 4 by someone with the account name ''sengoku38.''
The clips contained scenes of the collisions showing that the Chinese fishing
boat had rammed into Coast Guard vessels.
Even though the clips were deleted the following day, the video rapidly spread
in cyberspace and was shown on TV on numerous occasions, effectively negating
the Japanese government's policy of keeping the video from the public out of
apparent concern it could provoke China.
Only a version lasting less than seven minutes had been shown to a limited
number of lawmakers a few days earlier.
Following the leak, China urged Japan not to prevent bilateral ties from being
repaired.
The posting prompted the Coast Guard to file criminal complaints with the Tokyo
police and prosecutors on Monday on suspicion of a possible breach of the
National Public Service Law and the Unauthorized Computer Access Law.
The prosecutors used a search warrant to seize the records from Google on
Tuesday after the company reportedly indicated it would be difficult to
voluntarily release such records due to its privacy policy.
Following the Sept. 7 collisions in the East China Sea, the Coast Guard
arrested the Chinese fishing boat's skipper on suspicion of ramming into one of
its Coast Guard ships near the disputed islands, heightening tensions between
the two largest Asian economies.
As political and diplomatic pressure mounted for the immediate release of the
captain, which the Chinese government had pressed for strongly, prosecutors
freed him Sept. 25 pending further investigation. He subsequently returned to
China.
==Kyodo
