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.