4th Quarterly, 2005 No.138
Offender Revealed - Discrimination on the Internet
End of January 2006, Amagasaki Police Station sent a case of discrimination on the Internet to the prosecutors office for the charge of defamation. It is a discriminatory case committed by A, a city employee, against his colleague B who is a member of BLL. In March 2003, an e-mail message was first sent to B stating, "I will open a web-site focusing on you as special features. It will be sent to the world, so you'll give me your comments." Then it was followed by the actual opening of a web-site under the name "NPO to Monitor the City Employee B of Amagasaki."
Since then, the web-site has been up-dated 19 times during 15 months, with fabricated information such as "the Employee raped a woman" or "the Employee intimidated others
using a name of one of BLL leaders." The offender used tricky ways in opening the web-site with a provider abroad, and sending e-mails using a transfer service abroad.
Amagasaki West Police conducted a house search of the suspect A in February 2004, and confiscated his computer. Finally, the police obtained the evidence to prove that he opened and operated the web-site, leading to the reference to the prosecutor offices. The suspect denies the charge saying, "My computer has been manipulated by a hacker. I am totally unaware of such incident." BLL Hyogo has been tracing the case, and will take actions accordingly.