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s the internet advances rapidly and more and more people gain access to it, many countries are struggling to find a balance between internet security and internet freedom.

This difficult balancing act has never been more apparent in a country like Indonesia, which has 64 million Facebook accounts, 20 million Twitter users and 5 million active bloggers.

While Indonesia is a home to a large number of internet-savvy individuals, it also has a contentious cyber law in the form of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.

An ongoing research project conducted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that the ITE Law has strayed from its initial objective of facilitating the use of the internet for economic development.

“As a legal product, the ITE Law unfortunately does not regulate the economic aspects enough, especially if compared to cyber regulations in other countries,” CSIS politics and international relations department head Vidyandhika Perkasa said.

In practice, the law is used more frequently to tackle non-economic issues, such as blasphemy.

“The legal instrument regulating the internet in Indonesia mostly deals with concerns regarding negative content and fear of the internet being misused by irresponsible people. But those things are only one aspect of cyber regulation in other countries,” CSIS researcher Andrew Mantong said.

The CSIS therefore suggested that the ITE Law should be amended so that it could again serve as a catalyst to internet-based economic development.

“We want the internet to be seen as a public good in the future. Something that could be steered toward supporting economic development. So that we don’t always talk about blocking negative content. We need more sophisticated regulation,” said Andrew.

He cited homegrown motorcycle taxi ride-hailing application Go-Jek as an example of how the internet could be used to spur economic growth.

Unfortunately, in its current iteration, the ITE Law does not have many stipulations regulating a service provider like Go-Jek.

“For example, how will we regulate the authenticity of online transactions, how do we legalize digital copyright and how do we settle online contract disputes,” Andrew said.

Instead, the law has detailed stipulations on online defamation, an offense that is punishable with up to six years’ imprisonment and fines of up to Rp 1 billion (US$75,000).

Freedom House has criticized such provisions as they have been “repeatedly used to prosecute Indonesians for online expression” and applied “often to intimidate and to silence critics”.

The number of online defamation prosecutions almost doubled in 2014 with 41 cases, up from 21 cases in 2013 and only 10 cases in 2012.

Some of individuals who were sent to prison for online defamation are those who worked to uncover corruption by government officials, politicians and police officers.

“Therefore, we need to find a formula that drives wider internet access, as well as a regulation that strikes a balance between internet security and freedom. That’s the kind of research that Indonesia needs,” Andrew said.

But Indonesia is not the only country that experiences problems in finding the right balance.

“Other countries are also still struggling to find the right balance because this is a hot-button issue, especially after the Snowden case,” Andrew said, referring to Edward Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 without prior authorization.

Other than conducting study of the ITE Law, the CSIS is also carrying out research on cyber politics.

“We are now currently conducting research on cyber politics and this may sound futuristic but through cyberspace, we now can see the dissemination of political ideas, how political actors behave, gain support, manipulate other candidates and so on,” Vidyandhika said.

The head of CSIS politics and international relations department said the research was part of the think tank’s attempt to diversify its research portfolio to enable the institution to keep up with an increasingly advanced society.

“We have to think beyond traditional politics. Technology expands significantly and it influences how people think of a [political] candidate,” said Vidyandhika.