Tue, 25 Sep 2001

Law on digital signature urgent, minister says

JAKARTA (JP): Specific laws, such as a law on digital signature, are more in line with the public's immediate needs than a generic and comprehensive law for cyber crimes, a senior official has said.

State Minister for Communications and Information Syamsul Muarif said on Monday that a generic law on cyber crimes was not needed immediately as they can be dealt with using existing laws.

"Various existing laws can also embody regulations concerning cyber (space) or information and technology (IT). So if those laws could deal with cyber crimes, we've no need to worry so much," he said on the sidelines of a dialog discussing the draft on Indonesia's first law on Cyber crime.

Syamsul said that the urgent issue was regulations regarding the authentication of the digital signature for transactions online, which had never been dealt with before.

"We can see that (the public) thinks digital signature is urgent, then that is what we will put forward first," he said, explaining that the regulation was needed to encourage growth in IT investment and commerce.

Commerce has not been quite the same with the advent of Internet technology, where time and space becomes obsolete in doing business. No longer restricted to a store closing time, a customer could order goods via the Internet at any time of the day and anywhere in the world.

However, security has always been an issue with transactions over the Internet, and tales of fraud have become the horror of both the buyer and the seller. Even more so in countries such as Indonesia, where regulations on cyber crimes are practically nonexistent.

At the end of last year, there were approximately two million Internet users in Indonesia, of which only 16 percent have performed transactions through the Internet, while the remaining are wary because of security issues.

Syamsul said that a regulation on digital signature was needed to ensure the public that doing transactions online was safe and that any violations would not go unpunished.

Separately, head of the University of Indonesia's institution for studies on technology law, Edmon Makarim, said that the government should first study the types of cyber crimes before deciding on a comprehensive law.

"If the crimes could be sufficiently dealt with using a governmental decree or a ministerial decree, why not use that instead?" he asked, explaining that a new comprehensive law would overlap existing ones and would cause confusion.

Edmon said that the fast-changing nature of technology could easily make a comprehensive law become obsolete, "and surely we don't want a law that is of no use to us after a couple of years?"

He cited cyber laws in other countries such as the United States, Malaysia, and Singapore which comprise of several regulations for dealing with cyber crimes instead of a single comprehensive law.

"In fact in America they have an anticybersquatting act which is part of a law on trademarks," Edmon said.

Cybersquatting is the act of registering domain names after famous trademarks, countries, areas, etc., with the purpose of selling them at a higher price.

He said that the institution have drafted a law on digital signature which he expects to be presented to the government in January, 2002.

"The law on digital signature would not go against the currently discussed Cyber law (law on Cyber crime), instead it would just be a more specific law to the (Cyber law's) general one," Edmon said, explaining that the bill would also encompass authentication of transactions via the mobile network.

A team comprising academics from the University of Padjajaran and the Bandung Institute of Technology, for the past year, have been appointed by the government to draft a bill on cyber crimes.

Head of the Cyber law drafting team, Ahmad M. Ramli, said that the academic draft has been finished and will be published for public scrutiny and criticism by the middle of November.

Syamsul Muarif said that he hoped that before the end of his term in 2004, the bill on cyber crimes could be passed into law.(tnt)