Japanese military leak due to porn: report

TOKYO: Top-secret data on an advanced US military system was leaked because Japanese officers were swapping porn files at work, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Japan is questioning a naval officer on charges he obtained confidential data on the US-developed Aegis combat system, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.

But the Yomiuri Shimbun said the data was leaked when the petty officer second class had copied pornographic images,  accompanied by the sensitive files, from a colleague's computer and circulated them to a third officer.

Police suspect senior officials might have been involved in the porn swapping as the 33-year-old officer being questioned would not have had access to the classified data, the newspaper said.

The petty officer said he did not know that the pornographic images were accompanied by sensitive information, the Japanese daily said, quoting Kanagawa prefectural police.

A police spokesman declined comment, saying the investigation was ongoing.

The Aegis system has a cutting-edge radar and can launch missiles at more than 10 targets at one time. The Japanese naval force has five Aegis-equipped vessels.

The data found on the officer's computer included formulas for the Aegis interceptor system and data on its radar's capacity to track several targets at once, the Yomiuri said.

Other news reports said the issue came to light after the officer's Chinese wife was arrested in late January for a visa violation, alarming the US military.

The petty officer, whose name has not been disclosed, is a crew member of a destroyer based in Yokosuka at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.