A Japanese policeman has lost his job for
accidentallyleaking confidential information via
peer-to-peer
(P2P) file-sharing software installed on his PC.
According to reports, the fired policeman worked for the
Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo, which confirmed recently
that personal information regarding 12,000 people related to
criminal investigations had been distributed across the internet
from the officer's PC.
The police officer had installed the Winny
file-sharing software on his PC, and did not know that confidential
data was being made available to other users via the P2P
network.
About 6,600 police documents are said to have been compromised,
including interrogation reports, statements from victims of crime,
and classified locations of automatic licence plate readers.
Among the files was a list of the names, addresses and personal
information concerning 400 members of the notorious Yamaguchi-gumi
yakuza criminal gang.
The officer had claimed, in an internal survey taken before the
leak, that he was not using the Winny P2P software on his PC.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at web security
software firm Sophos, said, "It is no surprise that the Japanese
police have taken a hard line against this officer for disobeying
advice about not running P2P file-sharing software - the
authorities have been trying to enforce a ban following a number of
similar embarrassing incidents in the past."
The authorities may also hand out disciplinary action to some of
the officer's superiors.
In May 2006, it was reported that a virus had leaked Japanese
power plant secrets via the Winny network for the second time in
four months.
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