On the night of Oct. 29, an Internet technology firm, after noticing that some 100 documents, most of them apparently made by the security police, had been posted on the Internet, notified a prefectural police headquarters near Tokyo. Alerted by this police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Department grasped the situation.
It has been found that 114 documents in five compressed files streamed onto the Internet around 10 p.m. on Oct. 28 via a server in Luxembourg. Most of them are believed to have been made by the MPD's Third Foreign Affairs Division in charge of investigations related to international terrorism. Fourteen documents were classified as "secret" — among them a list of the names of the members of an antiterrorism team and notices issued by the division's chief.
Sources say that most of the documents were made from 2007 to 2009. They include the names and addresses of informants who cooperated with the MPD division, a list of foreigners suspected of links with international terrorism, information on their families and information provided by investigative authorities abroad.