Police hunts for perpetrators behind pornographic pictures
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.