The National Police’s arrest of alleged leaders of a cyber criminal network called Saracen (an organization so large and well organized that the local media have dubbed them a “syndicate”) that has been accused of spreading hate online could just be the beginning of an ever bigger meme-related scandal.
Based on information gathered through the arrests, the police are now expanding their investigation to catch more of the network’s social media administrators, as well as their clients, who the police believe have been paying Saracen millions of rupiah to spread negative content based on race and religion online.
“Who the clients are we can’t say for now, we’re still looking into it,” said National Police Spokesman Awi Setiyono, as quoted by Detik yesterday.
Awi said that Saracen’s captured leaders admitted to having high paying clients, but added that the police are still gathering evidence before they’re able to reveal who those clients are.
Saracen also reportedly has 800,000 followers across its multiple social media groups, but Awi conceded that would be too difficult to arrest them all for hate speech, so the police are going to focus on capturing the network’s administrators.
The existence of Saracen was first revealed to the public yesterday when the National Police’s Cyber Crimes Directorate announced the arrests of three people thought to be the group’s leaders, including its founder and main recruiter.
The three suspects may face up to 6 years jail time for online hate speech, which is a violation of the Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE).
One of the network’s Facebook pages, Saracen Cyber Team, features logos for the Muslim Cyber Army, a loose network of cyber activists promoting conservative views of Islam on the banner of the page.
