Amnesty International’s Security Lab has found that at least four Israeli-linked firms have been selling invasive spyware and cyber-surveillance technology to Indonesia, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel and is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. These firms include NSO, Candiru, Wintego, and Intellexa. Amnesty’s research was based on open sources, including trade records, shipping data, and internet scans. The report discovered links between official government bodies and agencies in Indonesia and Israeli tech firms going back to at least 2017. German firm FinFisher was also found to have sent such technologies to Indonesia.
The report says that highly invasive spyware tools are designed to be covert, making it challenging to detect cases of unlawful misuse of these tools against civil society. This is of special concern in Indonesia, where civic space has shrunk due to the ongoing assault on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, personal security, and freedom of arbitrary detention.
The investigation revealed that several of the imports passed through intermediary firms in Singapore, which appear to be brokers with a history of supplying surveillance technologies and/or spyware to state agencies in Indonesia.
Indonesia does not currently have laws that govern the lawful use of spyware and surveillance technologies but has legislation safeguarding freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and personal security. It has also ratified multiple international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Amnesty urged the Indonesian government to institute a ban on such highly invasive spyware.
Amnesty collaborated with Indonesian news magazine Tempo, Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and news and research organizations based in Greece and Switzerland.
