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The story
It has come to light that unauthorized access to the disaster-information distribution service “Arcadia” may have leaked the personal information — names, departments, phone numbers, and more — of all roughly 3,900 Tochigi Prefectural Police staff. The service was originally a mailing system for safety-confirmation checks during disasters, and it appears police employee data was registered on it as well. The thread ranged widely: worries about scam calls impersonating police using the leaked data, questions over why a safety-check system needed such detailed personal information in the first place, and a running battle of corrections over the difference between the ranks “Superintendent-General” and “Senior Commissioner.”
10/20 (Tue) 10:54 JST
Mainichi Shimbun
Regarding the case in which disaster-information distribution service provider Arcadia Co. (Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture) suffered unauthorized access, raising concerns about a possible leak of personal information, it was learned on the 20th, through an inquiry with the Tochigi Prefectural Police, that the personal information of all roughly 3,900 Tochigi Prefectural Police staff members who used the company’s service may have been leaked.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Honestly, a lot of people get this wrong, so let me clear it up:
the Superintendent-General (警視総監) is specifically the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (Tokyo).
Tochigi Prefectural Police's chief holds the rank of Senior Commissioner (警視監).
"Superintendent-General" and "Senior Commissioner" are ranks above Sergeant, Assistant Inspector, Inspector, Superintendent, and Chief Superintendent.
In smaller prefectures, the chief holds the rank of Commissioner (警視長) instead.
No prefectural chief — including the Metropolitan one — has any authority outside their own jurisdiction.
It's the National Police Agency's Commissioner-General who oversees all the prefectural forces together.
Apparently there's a mountain of people who file complaints about lazy local police… with the night-duty staff at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, lol.
The rank "Senior Commissioner" (警視監) only exists at the Metropolitan Police Department and Osaka Prefectural Police. Every other prefecture's police chief holds the rank of Commissioner (警視長).
This is exactly why I said they need a punishment system in place.
Throwing money at this stuff is just a waste.
Pfft, there's no way there's any kami left, zura~ (a pun on 紙/"paper" and 髪/"hair," plus "zura," a comedic catchphrase ending)
And then the scammers will probably tell victims to go verify their identity with Tochigi Police directly — I mean, lol, they really do exist.
Yeah, this is bad.
Calls from the "actual" police were already getting hard to trust as it is.
"I cast away my life, and still I live on" —
ah, nah, we're good without that bit (quoting the Captain Harlock theme song)
Police and politicians are the kind of jobs that attract grudges easily, so
yeah, the leaked info's probably gonna get used for something worse than just scams.
Better it "washed away" (流失) than that it "wet itself" (おもらし) — way less embarrassing. (a riff on a typo: 流失, "washed away," instead of the correct 流出, "leaked")
Public security's the scary part.
Extremists and organized crime groups are gonna be gunning for them, seriously.
Do we actually need this thing?
Isn't it more like, "if you're alive after something like the 3/11 quake, get over to XX and help with the rescue effort"?
Feels like public servants kind of need this.
For real talk: it's so they can issue work orders to staff confirmed safe.
They need to know immediately who can move and who can't.
The Wide-Area Emergency Support Unit that backs up the riot police is made up of young officers from local stations and HQ staff, so
they have to report things like "Tochigi Police can mobilize XX emergency responders" to the National Police Agency right away.
Ugh, we're done for.
They're definitely gonna call saying "This is so-and-so from Tochigi Prefectural Police."
And if the target is also someone whose driver's license leaked in the Times Car-Share incident, that'll make the call even more convincing.
What are they even doing…
Scammers never actually get the police or government to do anything for you, so people who fall for it will fall for it the same way they always have —
it's the in-person visit scams that are gonna be the scary ones.
It's just a mailing list! Why the heck would it need the stuff below?? lol
> names, departments, job titles, cell phone numbers
Not the same service, but back when I was on a temp dispatch job, they made me register my home address and phone number as a disaster emergency contact, lol.
I've long since left that job, so I'd like to believe they deleted it…
If you don't respond to the email, they'll actually call you —
a safety-check system's pointless unless it goes that far.
The system's just badly designed.
Other places are probably at this same level, they just haven't made noise about it.
Probably they used the disaster-info distribution system meant for regular residents to provide a service to the police,
which is why police staff's personal info ended up registered in there too.
Maybe they've already leaked and just haven't announced it.
True that.
Given how carpet-bombing these attacks have been, it's likely already leaked and the people running those sites just haven't noticed yet.
Maybe because the attackers are using that data themselves??
Wouldn't it be a superior or some other prefectural police staffer making the calls?
Why would an outside contractor need to know that?
There's a retired officer (OB, i.e. an "old boy"/alumnus) involved in that.
Given how much has already leaked,
people really need to delete whatever info they can delete themselves, right away.
and changes their phone number and email.
Problem solved.
Funny how it's always the people who can't even understand the source article who say stuff like "just move."
So the scenario is: all of Tochigi Prefectural Police's staff moves out of the prefecture, and Tochigi becomes a lawless wasteland?
Is that it?
Though if it actually came to that, I guess they'd just bring in officers from other prefectures — basically swap out the whole staff.
Background and Key Points of This Story
This leak is one of a series of issues stemming from unauthorized access to Arcadia, a disaster-information distribution service for local governments, which Tochigi Prefectural Police reportedly used for staff safety-confirmation emails. What sets this apart from a typical personal-data leak is the heightened risk specific to leaking police staff information: scammers and in-person con artists can exploit real department names and real names to make their schemes far more convincing than usual. The thread also saw a string of posts conflating the rank “Superintendent-General” (警視総監) with the chiefs of other prefectural police forces, prompting corrections that a chief’s rank varies by the size of the prefecture, and that only the Metropolitan Police Department and Osaka Prefectural Police have a chief holding the rank “Senior Commissioner” (警視監). How much detailed personal information a safety-confirmation system really needs to collect is also a broader question that applies to disaster-response systems in general.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Unauthorized Access] Personal Information of All Tochigi Prefectural Police Staff Possibly Leaked — Arcadia Unauthorized Access.”
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