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Indonesia brushes off privacy concerns over COVID-19 app
A Health Ministry official said the PeduliLindungi app did not violate any human rights, noting that a US government report merely raised civil society concerns on privacy interference.
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Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno uses the PeduliLindungi tracing app to check in at Cinema XXI at the PGC Cililitan shopping center in East Jakarta on Oct. 3, 2021. (Courtesy of Kemenparekraf/-)
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he government insists that its mobile COVID-19 tracking application, PeduliLindungi, does not keep users’ personal data indefinitely and that measures have been taken to improve data protection and use, following a recent United States government report that raises concerns over the potential interference of privacy.
In its 2021 Indonesia report on human rights practices issued last week, the US Department of State flagged “NGO concerns about what information was gathered by the application and how this data was stored and used by the [Indonesian] government", in a small subsection dedicated to unlawful interference with privacy.
Speaking to a local news channel on Sunday, Health Ministry spokeswoman Siti Nadia Tarmizi acknowledged the security concerns surrounding the app but assured measures had been taken to mitigate potential problems.
She said that while civil society concerns over the app were “understandable”, its security was thoroughly being reviewed, seeing as the app was so central to the government’s pandemic recovery efforts.
“Given that this report [focuses on events] in 2021, much has since been improved in the use and protection of data, particularly encrypted data,” Nadia said.
The government app has gained notoriety among NGOs for requiring its users – essentially every individual in the country – to provide sensitive personal data points and have their movement in public areas recorded in the app, as part of efforts to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The app’s privacy policy states that it retains user-submitted data including name, date of birth, identification numbers, mobile phone number, address, profile photo and passwords, among other information.
