JAKARTA, June 26 — Indonesia's Attorney-General's Office (AGO) 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 today will enable prosecutors to access telecommunication recordings and allow data to exchange for law enforcement purposes, AGO spokesperson Harli Siregar told Reuters.
"We have many fugitives and need technology to detect them," he 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 AGO.
Digital governance and public policy analyst Wahyudi Djafar told Reuters that Indonesia's police and anti-graft agency are already able to use wiretapping.
But he said the new arrangement with the AGO could allow prosecutors to use surveillance even on the grounds of suspicion without formal charges or legally named suspects in an investigation.
Djafar, the Public Policy Director at Indonesia-based think tank Rakhsa Initiatives, which focuses 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."
Siregar, responding to the privacy concerns, said the AGO will only wiretap fugitives. When asked about the extent of the wiretapping powers, he said the act would "not be done arbitrarily."
Global rights group Amnesty International in Indonesia's board member Damar Juniarto 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 AGO is one of the state agencies authorised to wiretap, and ensures that customer data is safe.
A data protection law, passed in 2022, imposes corporate fines for mishandling customers' data. The biggest fine is two per cent of a corporation's annual revenue and could result in the confiscation or auctioning off of their assets.
— Reuters
