Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Google Japan informed Police: A Japanese Coast-Guard official admits he leaked the video on YouTube!




Anger and great divide between Japanese
Armed Forces and Tokyo current government?


This is maybe one of the first series of events where we see that the police and the IT firms are entering into new forms of "cooperation" and there is nothing to be very happy about it. The issue of confidentiality of sources and protection of information do not appear to belong to these people's book.

We were used to such things in non democratic nations, Burma, North Korea etc. But this link between investigations and Google leaves consumers with the knowledge that from now on these IT firms are not as free as one can think they really are. Maintaining business operations in nations that play with individual freedom seems to be the only motive and priority 1. Users are number 2 or eventually unaccounted for.

Internet users and tweeters are now warned after a Japan Coast Guard official confessed to have posted video footage of the September collisions between Japanese patrol boats and a Chinese trawler in waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands. This film was posted on the YouTube video-sharing website, investigative sources said today and are quoted by the official TV channel NHK and news agency Kyodo.

The investigation has found so far that the leaked video footage was posted from a personal computer at an Internet cafe in Kobe, according to the sources. Tokyo police and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office will question the official at the 5th regional coast guard headquarters in Kobe, who is currently aboard a coast guard patrol boat, after the vessel returns to the port later in the day, according to the sources.

Beijing last week expressed concern to Japan about the video, which appears to show the Chinese boat being steered into the patrol vessels and could therefore harden Japanese public opinion against China. We remember that the Chinese skipper was detained over the incident, but later released, a move for which Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been harshly criticized.

Google YouTube Japan said they had cooperated with the Japanese police "We follow the law like any other company and comply with valid legal process. When we receive a subpoena or court order, we check to see if it meets both the letter and spirit of the law before complying."

Politically, China is playing high touch in this territorial poker game and nothing guarantees that Beijing will save the pot, although we should always pay attentions to details, following a succession of animosity and aggressive tones vis a vis Japan and neighboring nations added to in other issues such as Peace Nobel Prize, trade and currency, TPP, democratization desired by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Japan's Kan's administration appears weakened as the apparent anonymous leak follows the illicit publication online only days ago of classified anti-terrorism documents that sparked immediate criticism as Japan prepares to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Google, auxiliary of police forces?

Tokyo prosecutors on Tuesday had seized records from the operator of the YouTube video-sharing website after the YouTube videos came as Asia's two biggest economies are seeking to repair ties after their prime ministers, Kan and Wen Jiabao, failed at two recent summits, in Brussels and Hanoi, to hold formal bilateral talks. So far, President Hu Jintao is attending the APEC but is reported as not planning to meet in bilateral session the Japanese Prime Minister Kan at the Summit 13 and 14th of November held at Yokohama.

In Yokohama, intense climate of suspicions fly high above the harbor city since the detachment of 21,000 police, secret units, and anti riots forces present here to protect the VIPs in session in the Minato Mirai 21 complex, and, in expectation of Saturday and Sunday (November 13 and 14) demonstrations to be held by Japanese activists, from the extreme left to the extreme right and by opponents to Free trade and TPP such as Japanese farmers unions and cooperatives.

* The JCG are under the authority of the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, formerly led by current Foreign Affairs minister, the hawkish DPJ Maehara Seiji
http://www.mlit.go.jp/index_e.html

Sources: Agencies, NHK, Reporter's Notes



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