Hi folks, this week, we saw a series of incidents which highlights how poorly this country protects personal data as well as its law enforcers and activists from cyber-attacks. We also saw how backward we are as a nation with reports of a girl murdered by her parents because they believed that she had been possessed by a mythical creature. Meanwhile, a bunch of Health Agency officials in North Sumatra got caught selling vaccines.
The Mother of All Leaks
Personal data belonging to 279 million Indonesians, living and dead, were stolen and sold at the online platform, Raid Forums by a user identified as “Kotz”. The data contains people’s identity card details, mobile phone numbers, emails and salaries. Some even had photographs of the victims.
To convince buyers, Kotz gave away data of around 1 million Indonesians for free and sure enough some people said that they saw some familiar names there, confirming that the data was valid.
Adding insult to injury, the personal data of 279 million Indonesians were offered at a price of 0.15 Bitcoin. That’s just over Rp 80 million.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kominfo) acknowledged that the sample data are identical to that of state insurer BPJS Kesehatan. The ministry summoned BPJS board members demanding an explanation and an investigation into how their database was breached.
BPJS spokesperson Iqbal Ma’ruf told Kompas that they are investigating but added that to date the insurer only stores data of around 222.4 million people.
Until now, it is still not clear how the data was leaked, let alone who was responsible for it. It is also not clear what the Kominfo is planning to do to prevent future leaks.
It’s obvious that the whole case was well over Kominfo’s head and so they did what they do best, block access to Raid Forums to prevent future uploads and sharing of Indonesian consumer or user data.
Have they not heard of TOR browser and VPN? As if blocking the website was going to stop the actual breaches and the leaks. Anyone hanging around Raid Forums would know enough to use VPN or mask their address one way or another.
Competence issue aside, it’s about time members of parliament get serious about deliberating the Personal Data Protection Bill. One member of the Information Commission certainly thinks they should and are.
Cyberattacks on Anti-Graft Activists
KPK investigator Novel Baswedan, KPK Director Sujanarko, and former KPK spokesperson Febri Diansyah have had their messaging app accounts hacked on Thursday. This follows the WhatsApp account hacking of former KPK deputy chiefs Busyro Muqoddas and Bambang Widjojanto on Monday.
Indonesia Corruption Watch held a press conference on Monday regarding the 75 KPK employees who failed the controversial Tes Wawasan Kebangsaan but hours prior to the event the former KPK deputy chiefs had their WhatsApp accounts taken over and their phones were ringing off the hook, preventing them from being able to use the phones.
Other anti-graft activists also had their messaging apps hacked and the moderator of the event even had her Gojek app hacked, sending her multiple cars, motorbikes, and food that she had to pay for.
Jokowi broke his silence on the KPK fiasco. He said the controversial Tes Wawasan Kebangsaan "should not be the basis to dismiss 75 KPK employees who have failed the test" adding "there are still chances to improve (them) through training". Not sure what sort of training he had in mind when apparently being politically or socially liberal was grounds for failure.
The president did not criticize the controversial questions found in the test nor did he question the lack of transparency in how the test is made and graded.
Girl Murdered by Psycho Parents
A 7 y.o girl in Temanggung, C. Java was murdered by her own parents who believed their youngest daughter was possessed by a hairy, ape-like mythical creature "genderuwo". The parents were made to believe that their hyperactive daughter might be the descendent of genderuwo, by a shaman and his apprentice.
The shaman told the couple the only way to exorcise the demon is to drown the girl until she loses consciousness. The ritual killed the young girl.
But the shaman convinced the parents that she wasn’t actually dead and that another ritual was needed to revive her after which the girl would be completely free from the mythical creature. For the next four months, the parents kept her in her room and continued to groom her.
The girl’s uncles and aunties began to note that they have not seen the girl in months. The parents told relatives that the girl was with her grandfather who lives in another village.
But when the extended family got together at the grandfather’s house for Eid, the whole family became suspicious. They all went to the couple’s house and found that the girl was dead. They reported the case to the police. The parents, the shaman and his assistant were all arrested and charged with murder.
Latest on COVID-19
The number of daily infections have been rising steadily after the Eid holidays which saw at least 15 million Indonesians travelling to their hometown in an annual exodus tradition known as “mudik.” Our active cases went from 87,514 on May 18 to 91,240 on May 22.
Meanwhile, cases of the more transmissible and harder to neutralize "double mutant" Indian variant of COVID-19, known as "B.1617.2" continue to grow. On Saturday, the Health ministry said two people in Jakarta have been infected by the variant, an Indian national and an Indonesian health worker.
On the same day, 13 Filipino fishing boat crew members tested positive for the variant when they disembarked at a fishing port in Cilacap, Central Java. There have been at least ten other confirmed cases found in North Sumatra, South Sumatra and Central Kalimantan.
This being Indonesia, there is no shortage of people looking to profit in time of pain and suffering. This week, two officials from the North Sumatra health agency, a prison doctor and a real estate agent were arrested for illegally selling COVID-19 vaccines which should have been available to the public for free.
Police said the vaccines were intended for civil servants and prisoners. Prisoners, as we know, are very vulnerable to infection and that’s why there are so many countries prioritising prisoners for their vaccination drive.
The suspects have inoculated 1,085 people since April, charging each jab Rp 250,000. Their clients were located in North Sumatra and Jakarta and it seems that all only had their first jab. You need two jabs BTW. So all you queue jumpers who gave money to these scumbags, good luck!
There must be something in the water there because North Sumatra is also where several officials were caught testing people with used COVID-19 testing kits, swab and all. The suspects have been operating since December. It is estimated that 9,000 people have been subjected to the phony swab test and the suspects pocketed Rp 1.8 billion.
Quick Reads
Indonesia voted against responsibility to protect and prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said it was a vote against a procedural change on the matter rather than on the substance but because the majority voted yes, it’s going ahead anyway.
Gojek and Tokopedia Sitting on a Tree
The long awaited and rumored merger is now official. The two Indonesian tech giants formed a holding company called GoTo housing all the entities belonging to both companies. For the time being nothing will change for consumers,drivers, and partners. The apps and operations remain separate. OVO might cry a little tho, they’re being sidelined for GoPay.
30 Indonesian shamans got together earlier this week to fire genie missiles to Israel to stop their military aggression against the Palestinians. They claimed the missiles, which was meant to hit on Friday, cannot be thwarted or destroyed by Israel’s defence systems. There was a ceasefire on Friday. Make of that what you will.
British Quarantine Jumpers Arrested
Two British nincompoops skipped quarantine after their arrival in CGK on 7 May because they claimed they were too busy to go into iso. They were captured in Bogor, West Java 12 days later, by which time they had been to various locations domestically. They had escaped the quarantine transport by pretending they needed to pee. The pair are now awaiting deportation.