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National scene: Revised ITE Law may hamper free speech
Wahyudi Djafar - JP/Seto WardhanaThe newly revised Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law could limit people’s rights to freedom of expression because many provisions in the law expanded the government’s role in controlling information, a researcher said on Monday
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Wahyudi Djafar - JP/Seto Wardhana
The newly revised Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law could limit people’s rights to freedom of expression because many provisions in the law expanded the government’s role in controlling information, a researcher said on Monday.
Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) researcher Wahyudi Djafar said Article 40 of the ITE Law, for instance, enabled the government to block access to electronic documents suspected of disseminating information related to, among other things, pornography, terrorism and defamation.
“Granting the government full authority to deny access to prohibited content on the internet is dangerous because it carries huge risks for the abuse of power,” he said on Monday.
Article 26 of the revised law enables people to request the deletion of published information if it is deemed to have become irrelevant. A suspect that has been found not guilty, for example, can ask for any information he or she considers to be no longer relevant to their case to be eliminated from the internet.
“This may benefit some groups who want to cover up their track record, such as deleting information about past human rights abuse cases,” Wahyudi said.
The House of Representatives passed the draft revision of Law No. 11/2008 on ITE into law in a plenary meeting on Oct. 27.
Communications and Information Ministry spokesman Noor Iza told The Jakarta Post that the government had decided to revise the law because there were deficiencies in implementation of several of its articles.
“This [revision] has been what the public has wanted all this time, namely letting the government have greater power in managing information technology,” he said.
