Ministry of Foreign Affairs United States of America release Practice Report Human rights (HAM) for 2021. This report analyzes 200 countries around the world as of Thursday (14/4).
This report, written by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Manpower, also covers the human rights situation in Indonesia Indonesia .
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at the launch of the report as part of US efforts to support civil society around the world who are suffering from human rights violations.
"They [world civil society] want the international community to highlight human rights violations wherever they are committed, and push for the same urgency to stop abuses and hold perpetrators accountable," Blinken said.
In the 60-page report, US concerns over a number of human rights violations in Indonesia are the main points. Among the dozens of cases they collected, the PeduliLindung application was one of the subjects they considered worrying.
The PeduliLindung application, which has been used by the government since March 27, 2020, has been used by tens of millions of Indonesians to access public places. This application was initiated by the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo), the Ministry of SOEs, and PT Telkom Indonesia.
The US Human Rights Practices Report categorizes use of the Cares Protect app as a potential "Arbitrary Intrusion Or Violation of Laws Related to Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence".
"A number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have expressed concern about what information the app collects, and how this data is stored and used by the government," the report said.
This concern arose because the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs found reports from a number of Indonesian NGOs, the PeduliLindung application often monitors and stores its own people's data in an illegal and unlicensed manner. The report does not specify which NGO made the claim.
"Police across the country sometimes take action without clear authority, aka violate individual privacy," the report said. "Several NGOs claim that security personnel sometimes carry out unwarranted surveillance of individuals and their residences, as well as monitoring telephone calls," they continued.
A study from the University of Toronto in December 2021, which examined several contact tracing applications in several countries, revealed that the PeduliLindung application has access to and can store sensitive data from its users. This data, strangely enough, is not even needed for the function of tracking the spread of COVID-19.
"Our analysis found that the PeduliLindung application requested several malicious accesses, including permission to record geolocation, camera permission which can take photos and record video, and device storage permission which can read photos in the user's gallery and other files," said the group of researchers. on their research.
According to the research, some of the PeduliLindung software settings are not required for its main function. For example, user data collected by PeduliLindung will be sent to analytics endpoint owned by PT Telkom Indonesia, such as user geolocation, device identifier, full name, and telephone number.
"It is not clear what the purpose is to protect users from Covid-19." said the research.
"This is also not clearly stated in PeduliLindung's privacy information, how the data is used by Telkom Indonesia, and whether they are used for digital advertising," they continued.
The research researchers also found PeduliLindung declares two permissions to access external storage, namely READ_EXTERNAL_STRORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. If a user grants access to these two storages, Cares for Protect will also have access to all files on their device, including potentially sensitive ones.
In the year PeduliLindung was launched, before the Canadian research was uploaded, 13 domestic and multinational NGOs voiced their concerns over the app's privacy policy on (26/6/2020). They requested that Kominfo protect the privacy of PeduliLindung users more strictly.
"While this app is relevant, it also has a high potential to put user privacy at serious risk," the NGO collection wrote in an open letter addressed to Minister of Communications and Informatics Johnny G. Plate. "We therefore urge you to provide more transparency and to ensure user privacy."
Kominfo has denied that a third party obtained PeduliLindungi's user information, calling the accusations 'Hoaks' on (6/9/2021).
"The PeduliLindung application is used for systematic and consistent observation activities related to COVID-19 to realize effective countermeasures (health surveillance), not for spying," said Kominfo.
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