The police Wednesday identified a Japan Coast Guard member in Kobe as a suspect in the Nov. 4 leak onto YouTube of video footage showing a Sept. 7 collision between a Chinese trawler and two Japan Coast Guard patrol ships off the Senkaku Islands. Earlier, documents apparently linked to the security police's investigation into international terrorism were posted on the Internet. The 44-minute Senkaku video is identified as one of the videos the Ishigaki Coast Guard Station in Okinawa Prefecture provided to the Naha Public Prosecutors Office. After the leak, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said that the punishment for civil servants who violate the duty of confidentiality is too light — up to one year imprisonment or a fine of up to ¥500,000.

In the leak of the terrorism investigation data, not only the privacy of informants was violated but also their lives can be exposed to danger. Seeing this leak, foreign countries may stop offering important information to Japan. But in the Senkaku video leak, the question of whether the video must be hidden from the eyes of the public at any cost must be asked. In view of people's right to know and national interests, the video should be officially released — not to stoke anti-China feelings but to give an objective picture of what happened.

After the Sept. 7 collisions, the captain of the Chinese ship was arrested the next day. His detention was to continue through Sept. 29. But the Naha prosecution office announced on Sept. 24 that it would release him in view of the overall Japan-China relations.