First cyber crime trial leaves court puzzled
First cyber crime trial leaves court puzzled
Sari P. Setiogi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"It's a bird! No, it's a plane. Wait, it could be a cyber crime.
But as nobody sees it, it may not exist."
This take off from the famous Superman comic books may best
describe the situation during Tuesday's hearing of an alleged
hacker who has been charged with breaking into the General
Elections Commission (KPU) website in April.
While hearing testimonies from two police officers, the judges
and defense team appeared utterly confused, and instead of asking
for an explanation on the technical details, they puzzled over
general matters.
Police officer Petrus Napitu, who was in charge of watching
the display screen at the election tabulation center on April 17,
testified that he witnessed abnormalities on the website.
"I concluded that there might be an attack on the system and
immediately reported it to the head of the KPU information
technology section, Achyar," he told the court at the Central
Jakarta District Court presided over by judge Hamdi.
The lawyers cornered the witness over his choice of words.
"That was not an attack. Did you see any physical evidence of
what you claimed as an attack? An attack should always be
followed by physical evidence," said a member of the defense team
led by Mukhtar Zuhdy.
The lawyer team then said it was only Napitu's personal
conclusion that there was an attack, as the police officer said
he did not have any physical evidence.
The Indonesian legal system does not yet adequately address
Internet-related crimes, placing lawyers and judges in a
difficult position to charge Dani Firmansyah for hacking into the
election website and changing the names of several parties into
fruits on the website.
In the country's first cyber crime trial, the prosecutors
charged him under Telecommunications Law, which stipulates a
maximum sentence of six years in prison if the defendant is found
guilty for manipulating access to a telecommunications network.
The second witness, chief of Jakarta Police's cyber crime
unit, Adj. Sr. Comr. Petrus R. Golose, delivered a comprehensive
presentation on several technical tools used in the crime, such
as a router, a log file and a server.
"I was trying to reveal the chronology by giving details of
the tools used, otherwise it would be difficult to understand
(the chronology)," he said.
However, the lawyers could not fully accept his presentation
of electronic evidence as legal since Article 184 of the Criminal
Law Procedures Code indeed states that legal evidence is
considered to be testimony by witnesses, experts and defendants,
as well as documents.
"It should be understood that evidence in a cyber crime might
be completely different as what could be provided in an ordinary
crime," said Golose to the team of lawyers.
The trial was adjourned until next week.