As a privacy company, we believe it's important to be transparent when we are contacted by Law Enforcement.
Yesterday, we received an email from the Police in Chiba Prefecture, Japan regarding your server (管理人により削除)
Before you panic, we've informed the police that we do not hold any identifying data, and the BBS that you operate appears to be within the law, and as such we will not disclose any information about you, nor supply any copies of data from your server.
Below is a copy of the email that we received, followed by our response to the police.
TO whom it may concern I'm Akira Ozu at the Cybercrime division, Community Safety Department, Chiba Prefecture Police Headquarters, Japan. We are now investigating a series of cases of bomb threat and death threat on websites and we need your cooperation to proceed our investigation. We kindly request for disclosure of account information to keep the public order. 1 Case summary In japan,there are malicious groups that repeatedly post bomb threats and death threats on the websites of schools and other public facilities. There posts of threatening causes forcible obstruction of business of these facilities, dispatch of police and fire department and news report on the TV and newspaper about state of caution. Although these threatening have not been carried at present, people are worried and it has become a serious social problem. The suspects posts using Tor. One of the malicious groups administrates a BBS on PRIVEX where they report their crimes each other and talking about the reaction of society to these threatening. More than 900 posts of threatening by 3 suspects were reported on this BBS in this year. The whole number of post of threatening is unknown because there are a lot of posts not being reported anywhere. 2 The target IP (管理人により削除) 3 The requested information (1)Contractor information Name,address,date of birth,contact phone number,email address, connection source IP address at the registration. (2)Contract date,name of service,contract service content,service usage period(use start date,end date) (3)Payment information Bill address,name of credit card company,credit card number(in case of credit card payment),name of bank,account number(in case of direct debit) (4)The copy of the relevant area of server computer ・Some threatening are against embassies in Tokyo and it may lead to international problems. ・Some threatening are about murdering the specific citizen. ・The whole picture of these groups is unknown so it is possible that they actuary carry out bombing or so on. It is necessary to identify the suspects, including the BBS administrator, with your disclosure. I hope for as much cooperation as possible to identify the suspects. If this case doesn't reach the bar or you need more detailed information to answer our inquiry please let me know. Sincerely, Assistant Police Inspector Akira Ozu Cybercrime Division Community Safety Department, Chiba Prefectural Police, Japan 1-9-1 Nagasu,Chuo-ku, Chiba-city, CHIBA,260-8668, Japan Office:+81-43-201-0110(Ext.3435) E-mail:cyberka005@police.pref.chiba.jp
Our response:
Hello,
After investigating the IP you've provided, we managed to access the BBS's website. We have not found any evidence that the people making bomb/death threats are the same individual(s) who operate the website. Additionally, the BBS is 99% user-generated content, similar to such userboards as 2chan and 4chan, and it is not illegal for a customer to operate a public BBS such as this one.
We did notice a lot of discussions about Takahiro Hasekara, we've done some research on the Takahiro Hasekara issue, and it seems that there are 100's of BBS's like this. Taking it down wouldn't impact the problem in any way, people would just move to one of the many other BBS's.
Nevertheless, as we are a privacy company, we don't store any such information that would help you identify the person, not even the IP addresses used for ordering or paying.