T

he government says the “right to be forgotten” clause in the new Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law will be upheld, although critics say the country lacks the legal infrastructure to enforce it.

All internet content providers, ranging from search giant Google to online news outlets, must comply with the provision, a top government official said Tuesday, adding that those who refused to comply would face sanctions.

Henri Subiakto, an expert staff member at the Communications and Information Ministry and the representative of the government in deliberations on the 2016 ITE Law, said details regarding the possible sanctions would be included in a government regulation.

“We have to force [content providers] to comply with the law. If they neglect a court order to delist unwanted online stories, they have to be punished,” Henry told The Jakarta Post.

A person’s right to request the deletion from the internet of past improprieties under their name, dubbed the right to be forgotten, can now be exercised following the issuance of the revised law last week.

Under Article 26 of the ITE Law, anyone from politicians to recently released convicts can seek a court order to remove online stories about them that they claim are inappropriate and have become irrelevant.

In the revised law, there is no explanation of how to implement the right to be forgotten, which Henri said would also be detailed in the upcoming regulation.

The government regulation detailing Article 26 was set to be available next year, Henri said, adding that deliberations would commence soon after the ITE Law came into force on Nov. 27.

Representatives of Google in Indonesia were not immediately available for comment on the subject.

Theoretically, a court order could not be used as a basis for punishing content providers as it was not legally binding for them, said Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) executive director Supriyadi Widodo Eddyono.

Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) researcher Wahyudi Djafar said an independent body should be established to execute the sanctions.

The practice of internet content deletion received international legal backing after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in May 2014 in favor of Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spanish national who demanded that a search result regarding a 1998 article in La Vanguardia newspaper be removed.

Gonzalez said the article in question regarded the auction of his home because of outstanding debts. However, despite having paid his debts, the article still showed up in Google searches 16 years later.

The ECJ ruled in its verdict that people could ask search engines to remove content that the former deemed inappropriate and irrelevant. “Seeing the Spanish man’s case, the right to be forgotten should be adopted in Indonesia,” said Henri, referring to the ECJ ruling.

The government and the House of Representatives claim that the clause on the right to be forgotten, proposed by the latter at the eleventh hour of the law’s deliberation, is intended to uphold internet privacy. They say people have the right to restore their reputations because inappropriate news about them published online could ruin their lives in the future.

But experts believe Indonesia is not ready to implement the deletion clause, arguing that the country lacks legal mechanisms to do so.

Wahyudi said there were no regulations on data protection, including directives on content deletion, to support the implementation of the right to be forgotten in the country.

He also criticized the absence of details regarding Article 26 in the ITE Law, citing Article 28J of the Constitution, which stipulates that any restriction of people’s rights has to be regulated by law.

The practice of online content deletion would put “people’s right to information” in jeopardy, thus should be specifically stipulated in the revised ITE Law, Wahyudi said.