Indonesian police will question Facebook this week as part of criminal investigation into user data leak

The legal issues surrounding over one million Indonesian Facebook users’ data that was illegally appropriated by Cambridge Analytica (CA), the data analysis firm at the center of a huge international political scandal, are apparently far from resolved even after Facebook Indonesia representatives met with Minister of Communications and Information Technology Rudiantara last Friday.

The IT Minister seemed satisfied with Facebook’s promise to shut down access to user information from 3rd party apps (which is how CA was able to illegally acquire their data in the first place) as well as do an audit of which users had their data mined, as he did not bring up the possibility of blocking the social network as he had threatened to do several times earlier in the week.

But apparently Facebook will still has to face questioning by law enforcement as some in the IT Ministry and the police believe the user data leak could constitute a major violation of Indonesian law.

The head of public relations for the National Police, Setyo Wasisto, said the police would summon Facebook Indonesia representatives this week to discuss the case based on the recommendations of the IT Ministry.

“We have coordinated with the IT Ministry to immediately follow up on the case of data theft from Facebook 2012. Next Week the police criminal investigation unit will summon Facebook Indonesia to start the investigation,” Setyo said on Saturday as quoted by Tempo.

Setyo said that Facebook Indonesia was suspected of violating the Regulation of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology No. 20 of 2016 on the Protection of Personal Data.

Rudiantara had previously mentioned that, along with the possibility of blocking Facebook from Indonesia, the social media company could face up to 12 years in prison and fines as large as IDR 12 billion (USD 840,000) per violation of the data privacy law.

The police have not yet announced when they would be meeting with Facebook Indonesia representatives this week.

Last week, Facebook self-reported that the personal information of 1,096,666 Indonesians were mined by CA, making Indonesia the third most affected country behind the US, which accounted for over 70 million or 81.6% of the Facebook information that was improperly shared with CA, and the Philippines, which had 1.175 million affected users.

CA, a data analysis firm with ties to US President Donald Trump’s election campaign, was accused of mining people’s personal information on Facebook without their knowledge through third-party apps. The firm then allegedly used that data to create tools that could identify the personalities of voters in an election and influencing their behavior by tailoring the content they see on Facebook.



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