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Voter roll database at high risk of breaches, activist warns
The General Elections Commission (KPU) needs to closely follow the Personal Data Protection Law to make sure that the voter's personal information stored in the database is safe from breaches from outside hackers, says the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam) human rights group.
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A Jambi General Elections Commission (KPU) official reads the voter roll report from the province during a meeting at the commission headquarter in Jakarta on July 2, 2023. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak)
Election organizers must ensure the voter roll database that contains highly sensitive personal information of all voters is safe from cyberattacks, activists have warned, amid a recent spate of data breaches that have exposed Indonesia’s lackluster data protection efforts.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) presented the national voter roll last week following a lengthy verification process. There will be 204 million Indonesians eligible to cast their votes on the Feb. 14 voting day next year.
The commission stores the voters’ personal data in its own database, called SIDALIH, which is linked to the Home Ministry’s civil registry. Among the personal data stored are full names, addresses, dates and places of birth and ID and family card numbers.
The KPU needs to follow provisions mandated by the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law to make sure the SIDALIH is free from data breaches, said the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam) human rights group.
Read also: /indonesia/2023/07/11/kpu-denies-misrepresenting-diaspora-young-voters-in-voter-roll.html" target="_blank">KPU denies misrepresenting diaspora, young-voters in voter roll
Passed last September, the PDP Law is largely deemed a step forward in Indonesia’s data protection efforts. One important provision is mandating data controllers and processors to guarantee the security of the data, including by setting up firewalls and encryption systems.
“[SIDALIH] is at higher risk of being exploited due to the scale of the data, both in terms of amount and its type,” Elsam executive director Wahyudi Djafar said in a statement on Monday.
