ONI Country Profi le
315
Surveillance
Although the government of Indonesia has been actively attempting to regulate
content online, there have not been many reported cases of surveillance on the Internet. Nonetheless, there have been instances of government-sanctioned raids and
searches of warnets and schools. For instance, in February 2010, police raided warnets
in Bandung in response to complaints from parents and teachers that children were
missing school. Twenty-three warnets were raided, and 89 students were rounded up.
55
During the Peterporn scandal, police, with the help of teachers, searched mobile
phones belonging to students and seized phones that contained the Peterporn videos.
At the same time, the head of the Indonesian Education Ministry (Bandung Branch)
ordered heads of schools to monitor students on mobile phones.
56
It is too early to tell whether the government of Indonesia will move toward
increased surveillance in order to tighten its grip over cyberspace. However, in the
summer of 2010, an offi cial from the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory
Body expressed concern over the government ’ s inability to monitor communications
from BlackBerrys, since data were sent through Research in Motion ’ s (RIM) servers and
network operation centers (mostly located in Canada), as opposed to open networks.
57
An announcement followed from the Indonesian government that it was considering
a ban on BlackBerry services as a means of pressuring RIM to establish a representative
offi ce in Indonesia, as well as a mirror server in the country.
58 In January 2011, RIM
announced that it was committed to working with Indonesia ’ s carriers to put in place
a fi ltering solution to block pornographic sites — in effect, agreeing to comply with the
country ’ s antipornography law.
59
ONI Testing Results
OpenNet Initiative testing was conducted on seven Indonesian ISPs — IndosatM2,
Telkomsel, XL Axiata, Telkomnet, First Media, Biznet Networks, and Indonet — at
various periods between 2009 and 2010. Evidence of fi ltering was found on Indosat,
Telkomsel, and XL Axiata. Indosat and XL Axiata were found to be blocking signifi -
cantly more Web sites than Telkomsel.
Technical analysis of the data from Indosat, Telkomsel, and XL Axiata indicates
that Internet fi ltering is carried out through HTTP proxy blocking. This method of
blocking uses a proxy to determine whether requests of Web sites should be permitted
and modifi es requests to blocked Web sites to resolve to a block page.
On Indosat, when attempts are made to access blocked Web sites, users are redirected to a block page informing them “ Access Restricted by netSAFE. ” Similarly,
attempts made by users to blocked Web sites on Telkomsel are redirected to a block
page informing them that “ access is denied due to security enforcement ” — a reference
315
Surveillance
Although the government of Indonesia has been actively attempting to regulate
content online, there have not been many reported cases of surveillance on the Internet. Nonetheless, there have been instances of government-sanctioned raids and
searches of warnets and schools. For instance, in February 2010, police raided warnets
in Bandung in response to complaints from parents and teachers that children were
missing school. Twenty-three warnets were raided, and 89 students were rounded up.
55
During the Peterporn scandal, police, with the help of teachers, searched mobile
phones belonging to students and seized phones that contained the Peterporn videos.
At the same time, the head of the Indonesian Education Ministry (Bandung Branch)
ordered heads of schools to monitor students on mobile phones.
56
It is too early to tell whether the government of Indonesia will move toward
increased surveillance in order to tighten its grip over cyberspace. However, in the
summer of 2010, an offi cial from the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory
Body expressed concern over the government ’ s inability to monitor communications
from BlackBerrys, since data were sent through Research in Motion ’ s (RIM) servers and
network operation centers (mostly located in Canada), as opposed to open networks.
57
An announcement followed from the Indonesian government that it was considering
a ban on BlackBerry services as a means of pressuring RIM to establish a representative
offi ce in Indonesia, as well as a mirror server in the country.
58 In January 2011, RIM
announced that it was committed to working with Indonesia ’ s carriers to put in place
a fi ltering solution to block pornographic sites — in effect, agreeing to comply with the
country ’ s antipornography law.
59
ONI Testing Results
OpenNet Initiative testing was conducted on seven Indonesian ISPs — IndosatM2,
Telkomsel, XL Axiata, Telkomnet, First Media, Biznet Networks, and Indonet — at
various periods between 2009 and 2010. Evidence of fi ltering was found on Indosat,
Telkomsel, and XL Axiata. Indosat and XL Axiata were found to be blocking signifi -
cantly more Web sites than Telkomsel.
Technical analysis of the data from Indosat, Telkomsel, and XL Axiata indicates
that Internet fi ltering is carried out through HTTP proxy blocking. This method of
blocking uses a proxy to determine whether requests of Web sites should be permitted
and modifi es requests to blocked Web sites to resolve to a block page.
On Indosat, when attempts are made to access blocked Web sites, users are redirected to a block page informing them “ Access Restricted by netSAFE. ” Similarly,
attempts made by users to blocked Web sites on Telkomsel are redirected to a block
page informing them that “ access is denied due to security enforcement ” — a reference