10,000 items of police data leaked onto Internet via Winny software

A 26-year-old policeman at the Metropolitan Police Department's Kitazawa Police Station has mistakenly leaked internal documents, including investigative information, onto the Internet via the Winny file-sharing software, department officials said Wednesday.

About 9,000 documents, including reports on interrogations, and 1,000 photo images are believed to have been leaked from a personal computer belonging to the police officer, the officials said.

The officer, who works for the station's Community Police Affairs Section, had imported the data concerned to his own home PC by borrowing an external hard disk from a 32-year-old sergeant in the same division, according to the officials. The sergeant used to work for an organized crime control section of the Tokyo police headquarters, and so the leaked data are believed to include information on investigations he was involved with at the time.

The department learned of the leak from messages posted on a huge Japanese Internet bulletin board called 2 Channel, the officials said.

The officer in question did not respond to a survey the police department conducted in March to check if any of its employees had installed Winny in their private PCs following a spate of data leaks via the software.

Hirofumi Kitamura, a senior official at the police department's Personnel and Training Bureau, said, "The incident is truly regrettable, taking place amid our efforts to take thorough information security measures. We hope to ascertain the facts and deal strictly with the case."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a press conference, "The information leakage is unacceptable, and I expect the police force to fully investigate its cause and take preventive measures."


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