Liberal Japan

Update: This entry was first posted on June 26. In early June about 10,000 police files were leaked onto the Internet. This included many violations of individual privacy, for example the names of rape victims and so on. According to the Yomiuri, the officer who leaked the files has been fired:

Cop who leaked data via Winny dismissed
The Metropolitan Police Department dismissed a 26-year-old senior policeman at Kitazawa Police Station on Friday for leaking MPD investigative data on about 10,000 cases to the Internet via Winny file-sharing software on his private computer.The MPD also reprimanded a 33-year-old police sergeant who supervised the fired officer with a 10 percent pay-cut for one month for letting him copy the data …      

While I am glad to see strong actions taken in this area, I want to point out that so long as actions like this are ad hoc and arbitrary, they will not solve the problem. There needs to be a system set up of random audits to check individual computers along and with pre-determined punishments for those who don’t respect the relevant privacy rules.

Comment:
2007/06/26 — About two weeks ago there was a police leak, and about 10,000 crime files found their way onto the Internet. The name of a woman who had been sexually assaulted, the name of a woman who had visited an abortion clinic, and so on and so forth were out there for all to see. We learn from today’s Yomiuri (see below) that the police had an unintentional pyramid scheme going, where officers borrowed information from other officers and so on and so forth, till individual officers built up incredible stores of information on their PCs or portable hard drives, some of which were privately owned and taken home after work. Many of these officers own Winny, a file sharing program, which combined with a virus will share all the files on one’s PC or connected portable hard drive. Private information on personal computers, Winny, and a virus — quite a potent mix.First, off why are police officers using winny? Aside from the fact that they are downloading pornography, probably illegal pornography, isn’t it technically illegal to use Winny? Wasn’t the Winny creator fined 1.5 million yen at the end of last year just for creating the software? What is the point of anti-piracy ads at movie theaters like this one – if police themselves are flagrantly abusing the law?Second, the measures taken to stop this problem, which first appeared last year in March, represent a typical bureaucratic mentality . All that has been done so far is to circulate memos to make people more aware of the problem. As if, all those officers exchanging porn through Winny while keeping private files of their computers just didn’t understand how serious their actions were. When a problem as serious as this arises not only should heads be rolling, but stiff penalties need to be meted out against everyone involved. I would go so far as to say that even criminal charges should be considered.For foreigners residing in Japan, take note, that soon your fingerprints and pictures will now be a part of this system.Now there are some more serious measures in the process of being taken to resolve this problem. One is to phase out all personally owned PCs and replace them with government owned PCs. This is sheer bureaucratic opportunism. It’s like rewarding bad behavior. When bureaucrats mess up, their response is always that it is because they didn’t have enough money. The fact is, the latest leak happened because of a portable hard drive that was taken home, therefore it should be clear that dishing out more of your money for their PCs will not make this problem go away.A more credible solution is also in the works to encode all police files such that the can only be read with computers which have had a special decoding program installed. Hm. This has potential. But can this program, itself, be shared on Winny? Don’t be surprised to find the decoder out there being shared with all the other coded files. Moreover, can files once decoded be copied and pasted into a word processor. Probably.Recent News: 

• 2007/06/26 Dozens may be tied to MPD info leak, The Yomiuri Shimbun; “Dozens of police investigators are suspected to have been involved indirectly in the recent uploading to the Internet of about 10,000 items of investigation data by a senior police officer at the Metropolitan Police Department’s Kitazawa Police Station, according to an MPD survey. The scope of involvement has increased to such a level because the data were found to have been transmitted via a disk in a way similar to how people become connected in a pyramid scheme.” [Data borrowed from one person was borrowed by another and so on and so forth.] …On June 13, when the leak case was brought to light, the MPD issued a notice to all its staff members, about 46,000 people, ordering them to erase all investigation data kept on private personal computers and memory storage devices. Many investigators store such data on their private computers in preparation for court trials. In the case of major incidents for which investigation headquarters are established, it is common for investigators dispatched to the headquarters to take home a copy of the data as a memento.Therefore, some people point out that the issuance of the order to erase electronic data alone will do little to fix the problem.”

 Previous News:

• 2007/06/16 Japan: Confidential Police Files Leaked, Again, Global Voices; Excellent piece. Chris Salzberg does a great job of sharing some Japanese reactions to the recent accidental police leak of confidential information.

 

• 2007/06/15 Police data, including on probes, leaked via Winny, The Japan Times; “A 26-year-old officer at the Metropolitan Police Department’s Kitazawa Police Station in Setagaya Ward accidently leaked internal documents, including information on investigations, onto the Internet via the Winny file-sharing software, MPD officials said Wednesday.”

 

• 2007/06/15Police struggle to come up with file-sharing countermeasures, The Yomiuri Shimbun; The exposure of investigation information from a senior policeman’s private personal computer highlights the fact that police countermeasures against such a risk have stayed one step behind the problem, which is caused by computer viruses affecting Winny file-swapping software. As many police officers still copy confidential information onto their private PCs as reference data for work, the police are being pressed to review the way such information is controlled. …In March last year, when cases surfaced in which police information was accidentally placed online due to Winny-affecting computer viruses, the MPD issued officers instructions signed by chiefs of the Administration Bureau and the Personnel and Training Bureau. Officers were urged not to use their private PC to store investigation information; not to take work PCs out of the office without permission; and not to record investigation information using privately-owned recording media. … Simultaneously, the MPD made all officers submit written pledges saying they would not use PCs with Winny installed. In March this year, the MPD reviewed the situation: Division bosses interviewed officers to confirm they had not used Winny on their private PCs, and officers submitted printouts of their PC screens to prove that Winny was not installed. The MPD has repeatedly taken such measures. However, in the latest case of information being compromised, it was found that in addition to the officer from Kitazawa Police Station, several of his superiors, including a 32-year-old sergeant–the officer’s direct superior–had violated the internal rules. … The pattern of the latest incident is almost identical with that of a recent case in which secret information on Aegis destroyers belonging to the Maritime Self-Defense Force was exposed. In this instance, data stored on a magneto optical disk, originally part of an internal document, were distributed to a large number of other SDF personnel. … To prevent information being compromised, the National Police Agency has developed software that automatically encodes data when it is copied onto a PC. Data files made with police officers’ government-issued PCs cannot be read by other PCs unless they have the encoding software installed. Thus investigation data cannot be copied onto any kind of media. The NPA instructed police forces nationwide to introduce the software in April, and it is likely the project will be completed by the end of this fiscal year, which ends March 31. However, not all police officers are given government-issued PCs. As of April 1, about 198,000 PCs were being used for police work nationwide, but about 26,000 of these were privately owned [down from 51,000 the year before].”

 

• 2007/06/15 Data leaks included sex crime details, The Asahi Shimbun; “Names and addresses of police informants and sex crime victims were on 10,000 police investigation files that leaked via Winny file-sharing software, officials said Thursday. Other information included names and addresses of people who had attempted suicide. The sensitive data was leaked recently from the home computer of a Tokyo police officer, police said. About 9,000 documents, including interrogation reports, and 1,000 image files, were leaked. The leaks could cause huge problems for some of the people whose details are included, analysts said. If an informant’s name is linked to a gangster-related case, for instance, the individual could face violent retribution from yakuza groups. Victims of rape or other crimes could face public humiliation. … The leaks could cause huge problems for some of the people whose details are included, analysts said.If an informant’s name is linked to a gangster-related case, for instance, the individual could face violent retribution from yakuza groups. Victims of rape or other crimes could face public humiliation. … They found it contained extremely confidential information, including testimony from a woman in her 20s who had been sexually assaulted. The report contains not only her name, address and age but also the gruesome details of the crime. In another case, a file contained the name, address and mobile phone number of a woman who had been interviewed during a police investigation into an abortion clinic.”

 

• 2007/06/14 MPD: 10,000 documents leaked / Data from police officer’s PC uploaded onto Internet via Winny, The Yomiuri Shimbun; About 10,000 documents and images have been accidentally uploaded onto the Internet from the private computer of a senior policeman, including investigators’ records and personal information of people subject to investigation, the Metropolitan Police Department said Wednesday. The information is believed to have been compromised through the file-swapping software Winny that was installed on his computer after his computer was infected by a virus. The officer, 26, belongs to the Community Police Affairs Section of the MPD’s Kitazawa Police Station. … The police were alerted to the incident after they found a message on an Internet bulletin board saying police information was being uploaded at about 8 a.m. Tuesday. The police confirmed that about 9,000 documents and about 1,000 images had been revealed, including a document containing a statement and the name of someone claiming to have been sexually assaulted, a document with details of an investigation into a juvenile criminal case, a report and records on casino gambling, and an analysis of suspects’ bank accounts. … The police were alerted to the incident after they found a message on an Internet bulletin board saying police information was being uploaded at about 8 a.m. Tuesday. The police confirmed that about 9,000 documents and about 1,000 images had been revealed, including a document containing a statement and the name of someone claiming to have been sexually assaulted, a document with details of an investigation into a juvenile criminal case, a report and records on casino gambling, and an analysis of suspects’ bank accounts.”

 

• 2007/04/12 A hazard named Winny The Japan Times; “One irony about Winny is that police officers used computers incorporating the software, causing information leakage, even after the Kyoto prefectural police arrested the Winny designer in April 2004 on suspicion of aiding copyright violations through his invention of the software and his subsequent improvements of it. He says he can redesign Winny to prevent virus-related leakages or to erase leaked files but he will not do so because the act would constitute an improvement of the software, for which he has already been arrested. This episode shows that the revision of present laws or enactment of new laws can contribute to making the Internet safer. The bottom line is everyone should be aware that the Net is full of dangers.”

 

• 2006/12/14 Winny creator guilty in copyright violations, The Japan Times; “The man who developed the Winny file-sharing program was found guilty Wednesday and fined 1.5 million yen for assisting users in copyright violations.”

 

• 2006/03/08 NPA bans Winny after copious info leaks,The Japan Times; “Police announced Tuesday that investigation documents including personal information on crime victims have been leaked onto the Internet via a chief inspector’s virus-infected personal computer. The incident follows the revelation last week of an Okayama Prefectural Police leak of data on 1,500 people found posted on the Internet and confidential data leaked from PCs of Self-Defense Forces personnel. In all cases, the file-sharing software Winny was downloaded into the computers from which the information was leaked, police said. The National Police Agency issued a notice Tuesday banning the use of Winny software by police officers.”

 

• 2006/03/05 Police officer leaks info on 1,500 people on Net, The Japan Times; “Personal data on 1,500 people, including crime victims, was erroneously posted on the Internet via an Okayama police officer’s home computer that had been infected with a virus. The data, including information on physical evidence collected at crime scenes, investigative reports on thefts and other criminal cases prepared by the officer, and names of investigators, was apparently leaked through the file exchange software Winny that was loaded on the home computer, police officials said. … The Okayama police has banned its officers from using Winny on their home computers use in the wake of a series of data leaks.”