Cyber cafe visitors in Kediri now obliged to leave IDs

Visitors of Internet cafes in the town of Kediri, East Java, are now obliged to leave their ID cards at the cashier tables, as part of the police's latest efforts to curb terrorism.

Both suspicious visitors and owners of Internet cafes who do not cooperate with the new regulation will be subject to legal actions, Kediri police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. M. H. Ritonga said while briefing Internet owners on the regulation at the police office in Kediri on Wednesday.

Ritonga said the move came after the police learned that the alleged suicide bomber in last month's church attack in Surakarta, Central Java, had observed church activities from a nearby Internet cafe two days before the bombing.

“This [the new regulation] will hopefully ease our monitoring of Internet cafés,” he said, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Ritonga said that Internet cafe attendants were now obliged to monitor the activities of their customers, including websites that they visited.

“If there are any suspicious activities, such as accessing radical sites, the operators will already have their IDs and can report them [the suspicious customers] to us.”

Ritonga said that those Internet cafe owners who do not comply with the new regulation would be accused of facilitating or assisting terror activities under the terrorism law.

There are about 250 Internet cafes in Kediri.