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Jakarta Post

Police don'€™t need wiretapping authority: Budi

The National Police’s detective division chief, Comr

Fedina S. Sundaryani and Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, June 29, 2015

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Police don'€™t need wiretapping authority: Budi

T

he National Police'€™s detective division chief, Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, has said that it was unnecessary to give police the same surveillance or wiretapping authority as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Currently, the police are only authorized to wiretap suspects during the secondary stage of an investigation after gaining permission from the courts.

Furthermore, the police can only wiretap in cases involving alleged corruption or terrorism.

Budi explained that since the National Police cover a wide-range of cases, officers could easily abuse wiretapping authority if not limited by law.

'€œWiretapping must be managed because it has a lot to do with people'€™s reputation. If we are free to wiretap anyone then it would cause discomfort and inculcate in the public the sense of a lack of security,'€ he said on Saturday.

The detective division chief acknowledged that the police lacked sufficient internal supervision, which would not bode well if it was given the authority to conduct surveillance or wiretapping at the preliminary stage of an investigation, as the KPK is presently able to do.

'€œIf we are given that extraordinary authority, who will supervise us?'€ he said.

Budi'€™s claim that the ability to wiretap at the preliminary stage was unnecessary contrasted with the stance of National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti.

Badrodin said on Wednesday that the police should be given the same authority as the KPK in order to increase the quality of its investigative abilities.

Discourse on the subject arose after the House of Representatives announced their plan to sever the KPK'€™s authority to conduct surveillance and wiretapping in preliminary investigative stages, which is currently permitted by the 2002 KPK Law.

The plan received wide rejection from public and the antigraft body, arguing that the absence of such authority would prevent the KPK from conducting future sting operations aimed at catching suspects red-handed in the act of receiving bribes.

President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has also expressed his dissatisfaction and is seeking to withdraw the law amendment plan.

Benny K. Harman, the deputy chairman of the House'€™s Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, said that he agreed that the police and the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) should be given more authority to wiretap individuals in addition to the KPK.

He argued that the KPK was not sufficient to fight corruption and that the state must '€œincrease the number of institutions who have the authority to wiretap in order to strengthen the fight against corruption. The corruption [in our country] is on such a massive scale'€.

Separately, National Police Commission (Kompolnas) member Hamidah Abdurrahman told The Jakarta Post that the police'€™s wiretapping authority must remain controlled as it would be prone to abuse.

'€œ[Unlike the KPK] the National Police is an extremely large organization, so limitations must be put into place because there may be less disciplined officers who [wiretap] for their own means,'€ she said on Saturday.

The National Police currently has around 400,000 personnel stationed across more then 30 provinces.

Hamidah noted that if the police were given the same authority as the KPK, it would have to drastically increase their internal supervision to prevent abuse in surveillance and wiretapping.

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