Police hunts for perpetrators behind pornographic pictures
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Internet users have been bombarded recently with pornographic pictures of a local female TV soap star and a rock band guitarist, which have become a hot topic on local gossip shows and made headlines in several newspapers and tabloids.
In the face of the hype, the Jakarta Police cyber crimes division has opened an investigation to uncover the "real perpetrators" of the widely distributed pictures.
"The perpetrators will be charged with defamation and pornography under the Criminal Code," cyber crimes chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Petrus Reinhard Golose said on Wednesday.
Article 310 on defamation and Article 282 on distribution of pornographic materials each carry a maximum sentence of 16 months in prison.
To verify the authenticity of the pictures, police summoned three experts last week: telemathics expert Roy Suryo, Kompas photographer Arbain Rambey and digital photo expert Johntefon.
Roy had told the press earlier that the pictures were genuine, and even identified the camera as the Nokia 7650 cameraphone. He also pointed out the metadata showing when the pictures were taken.
The other two experts also confirmed that the pictures were real.
The police questioned the soap star on Tuesday for eight hours and were scheduled to grill the guitarist on Wednesday. However, his lawyer informed them that the guitarist was out of town and the questioning was rescheduled for Feb. 24.
Both artists have denied the authenticity of the photographs, as well as reports that one of them lost the phone containing the pictures.
The two artists' pictures have been recorded onto video compact discs are being sold illegally at the Glodok computer center in West Jakarta.
Petrus said the police would be focusing its investigation on uncovering who uploaded the pictures onto the Internet.
"We have located the website from where the pictures were distributed," he said. "The website provides 200 megabytes free to anyone who wants to upload pictures onto the Net."
Petrus said someone, presumably an Indonesian, had used the website to upload and distribute the photographs.
"We are on the hunt for this individual," he said.
This is not the first cyberporn case in Indonesia. Last year, some Internet users were also disturbed by pictures of models changing in a photo studio and a couple of local soap stars having sex.