An international investigation has revealed that at least four Israeli-affiliated companies sold invasive spyware and cyber surveillance technology to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic nation that does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. did.
An investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, based on open sources such as trade records, shipping data and internet scans, found that public and government agencies in the Southeast Asian country and Israeli tech companies NSO, Qandil, Wintego and Intelexa The relationship between the two has become clear. The linked companies were founded by a former Israeli military officer and date back to at least his 2017.
The Israeli company’s rival, German company FinFisher, whose technology has been said to have been used to target government critics in Bahrain and Turkey, was also found to be sending such technology to Indonesia.
Amnesty International said little was known about the system’s targets.
“Highly invasive spyware tools are designed to be hidden and leave minimal traces,” the report said. “This built-in secrecy can make instances of illegal misuse of these tools against civil society extremely difficult to detect, and risks rights violations becoming impunity by design.”
The report said this is a “special case” in Indonesia, where “civic space is shrinking as a result of continued attacks on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, personal security, and freedom from arbitrary detention.” “This is a serious concern.”
Concerns over human rights have been mounting in Indonesia since former General Prabowo Subianto was elected president on his third try in February. Prabowo, who will officially take office in October, has been accused of serious rights violations in East Timor and West Papua, where indigenous peoples have fought for independence from Indonesia since the 1960s. He denies the charges against him.
“From 2017 to 2023, we discovered numerous spyware imports or deployments by Indonesian companies and state agencies, including the Indonesian National Police,” the report said. [Kepala Kepolisian Negara Republik] and National Cyber Code Authority [Badan Siber dan Sandi Negara]”.
Amnesty International said Indonesian police declined to respond to inquiries about the findings and the National Cryptographic and Cyber Agency had not responded to questions by the time of publication.
The investigation noted that some of the imported goods were routed through a Singaporean intermediary company that “appears to be a broker with a history of providing surveillance technology and spyware to Indonesian state institutions.” .
Throughout the months-long investigation, Amnesty International worked with Indonesian news magazine Tempo, Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and reporting and research institutions based in Greece and Switzerland.
Usman Hamid, director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said: “A nebulous and complex ecosystem of spyware and surveillance suppliers, brokers and retailers, as well as complex corporate structures, make the industry difficult to hold accountable and regulated. It can be avoided,” he was quoted as saying in Tempo magazine. .
This is not the first time Indonesia has been linked to Israeli spyware; in 2023, Tempo reported that traces of NSO’s Pegasus spyware, which infects target phones without user interaction, were discovered in Indonesia. Reported.
In 2022, Reuters reported that more than a dozen Indonesian government and military officials had been targeted by Israeli spyware in the previous year.
fake website
Amnesty International says that unlike Pegasus, most spyware requires targets to click on a link that takes them to a website, usually imitating the sites of legitimate news organizations or politically critical organizations. I found the evidence.
Researchers found links between some fake sites and IP addresses linked to Wintego, Candiru (now named Saito Tech), and Intellexa, known for its Predator one-click spyware.
In Intellexa’s case, the fake site imitated Papuan news sites Suara Papua and Gelora. Although Gelora is the name of a political party, it is also an unaffiliated news organization.
Amnesty International also discovered domains associated with Candiru that imitated legitimate Indonesian news sites, including state news agency ANTARA.
Indonesia currently has no laws regulating the legal use of spyware or surveillance technology, but there are laws protecting freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and personal security. It has also ratified several international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Amnesty International called on the Indonesian government to ban this highly intrusive spyware.
Haaretz, citing anonymous sources, said NSO and Chandil are currently not active in Indonesia.
The newspaper reported that Singapore summoned senior Israeli officials in the summer of 2020 after “Singaporean authorities discovered that an Israeli company had sold advanced digital intelligence technology to Indonesia.”
In response to Friday’s findings, NSO cited human rights regulations in response to questions from Haaretz.
“Regarding your specific inquiry, based on our current human rights due diligence procedures, there is no active geolocation system or mobile endpoint intelligence system provided by NSO Group to Indonesia,” the paper said. The paper said. Introduced in 2020.
Meanwhile, Chandil told Amnesty International that it operates under Israeli defense export rules and could not confirm or deny the questions raised by the organization.
Wintego did not respond to requests for comment on the study results, Haaretz said.
Israel’s Defense Export Agency declined to comment on whether it had approved the sale to Indonesia.
It told Amnesty International that the sale of cyber surveillance systems is only permitted to government agencies for “counter-terrorism and law enforcement purposes.”
The United States blacklisted NSO in 2021 over concerns that its phone-hacking technology was used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” dissidents, journalists, and activists. The designation makes it difficult for U.S. companies to do business with the company.
Candiru and Intellexa are also subject to U.S. trade control regulations.
The United States imposed sanctions on Intellexa in March for “developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology that targets U.S. persons, including U.S. government officials, journalists, and policy experts.”
