Reports: Japanese Police Moving to Counter Wave of Internet Crime

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIGU35UA4C.html

Feb 5, 2000 - 01:33 AM

TOKYO (AP) - With hackers barraging government Internet sites,
Japanese police announced plans to improve crime-fighting in
cyberspace, newspapers reported Saturday.

Beginning late last month, unidentified hackers began a high-profile
campaign to crack state sites. And despite its love for just about
everything high-tech, Japan is far behind other countries when it
comes to tackling online crime.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest paper, said the National Police
Agency has requested $1.78 million from the country's fiscal 2000
budget to battle the problem. Police want to study how hackers break
into Web sites and ensure user names are not being abused, the reports
said.

Agency officials were unavailable for comment.

Agency figures showed that 247 Internet crimes, including distributing
child pornography, were reported in 1999, nearly double the previous
year, according to major Japanese newspapers.

A bill aimed at improving user verification, a so-called digital
signature bill, is due to be submitted to parliament soon, the Asahi
Shimbun reported. Digital signatures allow people to use the Internet
to buy and sell goods and services, it said.

The police agency is urging that mandatory identity checks on people
who apply for such signatures be made part of the bill, the paper
said.

The proposed legislation comes on the heels of a new law parliament
passed last summer to make it illegal to access sites without the
proper clearance. It takes effect this month.

The Bank of Japan - the country's central bank - the Defense Agency,
the Science and Technology Agency and the Transport Ministry have all
reported being attacked by hackers, though they reported no damage.

However, hackers into the Science and Technology Agency's homepage
left a message alleging that Tokyo denied the Rape of Nanking, the
Japanese army's massacre of as many as 300,000 civilians during the
1937-38 occupation of the Chinese city now known as Nanjing.

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