The Yokohama District Court on Oct. 28 gave a suspended 2 1/2-year prison term to a lieutenant commander of the Maritime Self-Defense Force for passing information on the U.S.-developed Aegis weapons system to another lieutenant commander, an instructor at an MSDF school in Etajima, Hiroshima Prefecture. Although the information, which included "special defense secrets," did not leak outside the MSDF, the court found him guilty of leaking defense secrets.

The trial was the first case to which public prosecutors applied the 1954 Law on Protection of Secrets for the Japan-U.S. Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement. The law covers not only members of the Self-Defense Forces but also ordinary citizens, and provides for imprisonment of up to 10 years for violators.

The passing of the sensitive data on the Aegis system, an advanced combat system to track and destroy enemy targets, has made the United States apprehensive over the possibility that the bilateral security treaty setup is being undermined. On the prosecution side, there was an opinion that the people involved could not be indicted since the case was a matter of information management within the MSDF. But the prosecution indicted the MSDF officer anyway apparently out of concern about the U.S.'s attitude. Criminal papers were filed with the prosecution against several other MSDF members, but the prosecution suspended indictment against them.

The ruling has highlighted the fact that Aegis-related information was handled rather casually within the MSDF. It also made clear that even if an SDF member does not leak defense secrets outside the organization, he or she can be found guilty of violating the Japan-U.S. defense secrets law. The ruling serves as a warning to the SDF and the Defense Ministry that they should take utmost care in handling defense-related information. But they should not use the ruling as an excuse for classifying as secret one piece of defense-related information after another, without giving sufficient consideration to cases in which sharing information with the public contributes to enhancing public interest.

A case in point was the dismissal of a colonel of the Air-Self Defense Force on Oct. 2 for passing information on the status of a Chinese submarine to a Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporter on May 30, 2005. On the basis of this information, the newspaper reported on its front page the next day that a diesel-powered Chinese submarine was being towed toward Hainan Island of China apparently after a fire had broken out inside the submarine while submerged in the South China Sea. Defense authorities regarded the information as a "defense secret." But this is the kind of information that should be shared with the public. The prosecution suspended indictment against the officer.

The MSDF lieutenant commander in the Aegis information case was asked for the information by the MSDF school instructor, who wanted to use it to prepare his students for Aegis-related training in the U.S. The lieutenant commander copied the data onto his computer in May 2002 and passed a CD containing the data to the instructor in August that year. The data included information on radar and missile capabilities of the Aegis system.

The defense counsel argued that since the MSDF officer did not handle the Aegis-related information in the course of his duties, the five-year statute of limitations for those who handle defense secrets outside their duties should be applied. But the court regarded him as one who handled the information in the course of his duties since he was in a position where he should properly handle "special defense secrets" from time to time.

But the court gave him a suspended sentence, saying the officer had no intention of leaking the information outside the MSDF. The ruling also pointed out that he consulted with his superior first about passing the CD to the instructor. It also said it is inappropriate to severely punish him alone since the unit in Yokosuka to which he belonged did not have adequate information management. The Defense Ministry says 38 people were involved in the data mishandling, one of them married to a Chinese woman.

The SDF and the Defense Ministry should take the ruling as a call to make serious efforts to prevent irregularities. This means reflecting on other matters as well, such as the coverup in the amount of fuel oil the MSDF supplied to navy ships of other nations in the Indian Ocean; the December 2007 fire inside the combat information center of a helicopter destroyer; the February 2008 collision between an Aegis destroyer and a fishing boat, which killed two fishermen; the death of an MSDF member during a training fight last month; and a suicide rate of 34.4 SDF members per 100,000 — twice the rate for overall national servants.