IT Expert: Indonesia is an Easy Target for Tapping

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Tapping is not uncommon in Indonesia. Many people question the idea as to why Indonesia is always an easy target to be wiretapped or tapped. 

With the recent alarming speculations regarding neighbouring countries such as Australia and New Zealand’s effort to tap a number of Indonesian statesmen, it is imperative for the involving authorities to investigate behind the easy access to do so.

As has been investigated and analysed by the Communication and Information System Security Research Centre (CISSRec), Indonesia is apparently still far left behind in terms of dealing with this kind of technology. 

What is even worse, knowing very little about it caused it to be incompetent when it comes to for such anticipation. 

This poses harm the national security and without the government and the involving Ministry trying to do about it, for the next years to come Indonesia will have all of its clandestine operations in many sectors transparent to the worldwide audience. 

This is not desirable of course, because there are certain things that are best kept internally without foreign knowledge.

According to the CEO of CISSRec, Pratama Persada, it is unquestionable that nations resort to tapping in trying to prioritize its national interest and this has been done for quite a long time.

"With all available potentialities, Indonesia is surely one of the easy targets that many countries have chosen to be tapped. What is even unfortunate, the provider and satellite of Indonesian network is not fully owned by local companies which led to bigger room for other nations to come at play in their endeavour to tap the us. Never under estimate foreign ownership especially in very strategic sectors such as telecommunication and information," Pratama informed.

Pratama explained, all over the air mode of coomunication, especially wired ones, are easily tapped. Tapping through cellular provider is equally easy. 

The encryption technology used is relatively standard that is the GSM A51 network for 3G and GSM A52 for 2G.

"GSM technology is very much standard, leaving room for others to tap it very easily making it seem like the tapping was performed without the knowledge of even the operator of that provider. This is why many operators denied to accusations regarding their involvement," Pratama further informed.

With the recent pejorative nation placed upon the issue of tapping, Pratama suggested an advanced encrypting technology as a preventive measure. 

Additionally, there is a need to safeguard strategic areas.

It has been learned that the tapping equipment has a range of more than 2 kilometres. This means the government ought to sterilize strategic areas such as the Presidential palace. (Akp/Ein)