Senkaku video likely leaked / YouTube footage of collisions probably authentic, JCG says

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government is investigating video footage posted on YouTube that is believed to be Japan Coast Guard recordings of a Chinese fishing boat colliding with JCG patrol vessels off the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, government officials said Friday.

Senior JCG officials said the footage is very likely authentic.

Six video files with such titles as "Honto no Senkaku Kaijo Hoancho" (The truth of the Senkakus: Japan Coast Guard) were posted on the video-sharing Web site shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday, according to a major security firm. They have since been copied onto other video and file-sharing sites, both domestic and foreign, and are continuing to spread.

JCG Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki told the House of Representatives Foreign Committee that the JCG has launched an investigation into the matter, sending officials to the Ishigaki Coast Guard Office that has been storing the footage.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan also told Cabinet ministers at the Prime Minister's Office on Friday morning to look into the matter.

The videos are believed to have been intentionally leaked in what may have been a violation of the National Civil Service Law, which requires the preservation of confidentiality.

Prosecution authorities and the JCG have already started looking into the storage conditions of videos in their possession and possible leakage routes.

During the 44 minutes and 23 seconds of footage, what appears to be a blue Chinese fishing boat collides with two vessels believed to be the JCG patrol boats Mizuki and Yonakuni.

In one of the videos, the blue boat rams into the starboard side of a white ship believed to be the Mizuki, amid the sound of sirens and voices yelling "Stop!" in Japanese.

Frantic voices repeatedly shout. "It's coming at us!" On another video, someone says in a murmur, "They threw themselves into [the Mizuki]."

A voice stating "[The ship] collided with the patrol boat Mizuki" can also be heard in the footage.

The words "Minjinyu 5179" are written on the blue boat, the name of the fishing trawler that collided with the JCG patrol boats in September near the Senkaku Islands. The time of the collision in the video--stated aloud by a man believed to be the person who recorded the footage--also matches that of the actual incident with the Mizuki.

"Sengoku38" is the user name of the original poster, described in the account profile as "a 25-year-old Japanese." The YouTube account is believed to have been created on Thursday.

The videos were the subject of much discussion on message boards and Twitter from late Thursday to early Friday. They were accessed an enormous number of times and transferred onto other Web sites even after the original videos were deleted by the poster.

The videos were repeatedly copied onto and deleted from overseas video sites in such countries as China and South Korea.

According to the JCG, the original footage was first submitted to the Ishigaki Coast Guard Office by the patrol boats. The JCG office then gave the original to the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office as investigative materials in the case of the boat's captain, who was arrested and sent to the prosecutors office on suspicion of obstructing the official duties of the JCG.

The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office also has a copy.

The JCG office is holding footage edited for evidentiary purposes to build a case against the Chinese captain. A copy stored at JCG headquarters in Tokyo was discarded, according to the coast guard.

The JCG usually keeps important materials in a safe for strict security. The JCG and Naha prosecutors are investigating the storage conditions and possible routes by which the footage could have been leaked.

Google, which operates YouTube, says it can confirm the country and the city where the videos were posted by checking the Internet protocol address of the personal computer used to put up the footage.

However, "since it involves matters of privacy, we can't make that information public. We'll consider the possibility of checking if we're asked to cooperate with the investigation," a Google official said.

About 30 Diet members on Monday watched video footage of the Senkaku collisions edited down to six minutes and 50 seconds from several hours of original footage.

This video has not been made public.