The Metropolitan Police Department and public prosecutors decided Monday not to arrest a Japan Coast Guard member who has allegedly confessed to having leaked video footage onto YouTube of the Sept. 7 collisions between a Chinese trawler and two JCG patrol ships off the Senkaku Islands of Okinawa Prefecture. The decision is based on investigative authorities' judgment that the JCG member, who submitted to interrogation voluntarily, will unlikely destroy evidence or run away.
He allegedly confessed that he had uploaded 44 minutes of video onto YouTube on the afternoon of Nov. 4 from an Internet cafe in Kobe and then deleted it on the morning of the next day. The video footage is identical with the video the Ishigaki Coast Guard Station in Okinawa Prefecture provided to the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Naha. It became available to various sections of the JCG. The JCG member is suspected of having violated the duty of confidentiality under the National Public Service Law.
The MPD will send papers on the case to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office and the latter will decide whether to indict the JCG member, chief navigator of the patrol boat Uranami of the Kobe Coast Guard Station. The most important issue facing public prosecutors is to decide whether the video footage constitutes a secret that deserves legal protection. The government stamping some item or a piece of information as a secret does not necessarily turn them into a state secret that public servants are banned from divulging. According to the 1977 Supreme Court precedent, an item or a piece of information can be regarded as a state secret only if (1) it is not known to the public and (2) its content or quality is such that, in substance, it deserves protection as a secret. It is highly problematic for a public servant to leak internal information unless it is real whistle blowing. But the prosecutors are likely to have a difficult time in making their judgment.