Indonesia signs wiretapping pacts with telco operators; analysts flag privacy concerns

Time of India

7 hours ago

By Ananda Teresia and Stefanno Sulaiman
JAKARTA: Indonesia's Attorney General Office has signed an agreement with four telecommunication operators to install wiretapping devices, an official from the Office said, raising questions among analysts about the potential impact on privacy and surveillance.
The agreement, signed on Tuesday, would allow prosecutors to access telecommunication recordings and enable data exchange for law enforcement purposes, the Attorney General Office spokesperson Harli Siregar told Reuters on Thursday.
"We have many fugitives and need technology to detect them," Siregar said, referring to the agreement signed with the country's largest telco company
Telekomunikasi Indonesia
and its unit Telekomunikasi Selular, as well as two other companies
Indosat
, and
XLSMART Telecom Sejahtera
.
The pacts, which would include mobile phones, are in accordance with a law passed in 2021 giving wiretapping authority to the Attorney General Office, Siregar added.
Indonesia's police and anti-graft agency are already able to use wiretapping, Wahyudi Djafar, an analyst focused on digital governance and public policy told Reuters.
But he said the new arrangement with the Attorney General Office could allow prosecutors to use surveillance even on the grounds of suspicion without formal charges or legally named suspects in an investigation.
Djafar, who is the Public Policy Director at Rakhsa Initiatives, an Indonesia-based think tank focused on digital governance and strategic security issues, said he feared the agreement could potentially widen the scope of wiretapping and lead to mass surveillance.
"There is no clear limitation on how the wiretap will be conducted and for how long and who can use the data," he said, adding "the (AGO) office's wiretapping power will be stronger than the police and anti-graft agency."
The Attorney General Office spokesperson Siregar, responding to the privacy concerns, said the office will only wiretap fugitives. When asked about the extent of the wiretapping powers, Siregar said the act would "not be done arbitrarily."
Damar Juniarto, a board member at global rights group Amnesty
International
in Indonesia, said the wiretapping agreements would mean more state agencies doing surveillance, potentially further threatening civil liberties.
Indonesia's Presidential Communication Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the concerns about the impact of wiretapping laws on civil liberties.
Merza Fachys, a director at XLSMART, one of the telco companies, told Reuters that the Attorney General Office is one of the state agencies allowed to wiretap, and ensures customer data would be safe. A data protection law, passed in 2022, imposes corporate fines for mishandling customers' data. The biggest fine is 2% of a corporation's annual revenue and could see their assets confiscated or auctioned off.