Submission on Indonesia's Draft Law on the Protection of Personal Data, 2018

Since 2014 the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics (MOCI) has been proposing that the Parliament passes a comprehensive data protection law. A first draft data protection law was issued by the Government for public comment in 2015 but no progress was made, and then in early 2018, the Indonesian Government issued a new draft personal data protection law. 

While these renewed efforts have positive intentions, a number of concerns ought to be addressed with the aim of strengthening the data protection framework in Indonesia. The Protection of Personal Data Bill proposed has a number of significant shortcomings.

Our analysis of the proposed Bill recommends that to effectively protect privacy and to meet international standards in protecting personal data, consideration must be given to the areas of concern and improvements outlined in our submission.

As the legislative process continues, Privacy International is calling for an open, constructive and consultative process. Privacy International hopes to contribute constructively to the next steps of this process along with the national civil society organisations in Indonesia.

Our priority is to ensure that the highest data protection safeguards are encoded in law and effectively enforced so that people in Indonesia are protected from undue harm and they are able to fully exercise the enjoyment of their fundamental rights and freedoms.

To find out more about privacy and data protection in Indonesia, please refer to ‘The State of Privacy in Indonesia’ (last updated in February 2018).

We take the opportunity to share our guide for policy engagement on data protection "The Keys to Data Protection". The guide is intended to help organisations and individuals improve their understanding of data protection, by providing a framework to analyse the various provisions which are commonly presented in a data protection law.