PUBLIC DISCOURSE has fixated on treason ever since the illegal wiretapping scandal allegedly involving former National Police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo and his inner circle came to light in Indonesia.
The dominant narrative reduces this entire episode to a fight over the head of state, treating the President as the sole target that matters. But official data from the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Agency (Bareskrim) paints a far darker reality. The surveillance network did not stop at the palace gates; it swept up over 6,000 phone numbers.
According to Bareskrim head Comr. Gen. Asep Safrudin, operators pumped thousands of phone numbers straight into the Lawful Interception Management System (LIMS) server. They bypassed judicial warrants, skipped procedural checks and trampled basic legal standards.
Police records sort the targets into five clear clusters. First came senior politicians and government executives, including at least 43 high-profile figures such as former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya.
Second came the police’s own ranks, ensnaring intelligence chief Comr. Gen. Dedy Kusuma Bakti.
Third were journalists, editors and media executives.
Fourth were civil society leaders and human rights activists who regularly challenge official policy. Fifth were prominent entrepreneurs and business leaders.
This breadth proves the wiretapping operation was never just an elite political conspiracy against the head of state. It was a dragnet tracking everyday communication across politics, media, commerce and grassroots advocacy.
Without downplaying threats to a sitting president, the fallout runs far deeper. It strikes at civil liberties, political rights, press freedom and the basic right to privacy. Leaving such apparatus unchecked pulls Indonesia into covert policing designed to neutralise dissent, echoing the total surveillance George Orwell warned about decades ago.
These risks were already laid bare in Amnesty International’s May 2024 report on spyware exports to Indonesia. That investigation exposed how state bodies like the National Police and the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) quietly acquired commercial, military-grade spyware through opaque intermediaries.
Procurement files pointed straight to international vendors, including Israeli firms tied to Pegasus, alongside Intellexa, Candiru and Wintego. Amnesty sounded the alarm back then, warning that powerful hacking tools would inevitably target civil society in a shrinking democratic space.
For rights defenders on the ground, the scandal brings little surprise. My own name, alongside several fellow activists, landed on a military surveillance watch list back in March of last year. A senior official quietly tipped us off, urging us to seek formal protection through the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK).
We cannot dismiss this scandal as palace intrigue. It marks an institutional failure spanning two administrations. The Joko Widodo administration built an expansive cyber-surveillance apparatus virtually devoid of judicial checks.
The Prabowo Subianto administration inherited that machinery, let it hum along quietly, and only took action once the crosshairs swung onto their own inner circle.
Both administrations helped nurture this environment, and both must answer for its chilling effect on public dissent. Modern intelligence agencies certainly need digital capabilities to protect critical infrastructure, fight cyber terrorism and guard sovereignty.
Yet invasive hacking tools must always serve as a rare measure of last resort, deployed only under strict judicial warrants when open-source intelligence falls short. Without strict legal oversight, national security becomes a convenient pretext for political espionage.
Treating the President and his cabinet as the only victims dangerously narrows the scope of justice. Political elites possess armed bodyguards, institutional power and state resources to defend themselves. Ordinary citizens enjoy no such shield.
Human rights defenders know this vulnerability firsthand. The chemical assault against Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras) activist Andrie Yunus by military intelligence officers in February of this year and the poison assassination of Munir Said Thalib in September 2004 were preceded by covert surveillance.
The failure to bring the masterminds of those crimes to justice proves that illegal surveillance reliably morphs into physical terror when left unchecked.
Investigating potential treason and guarding the head of state remains a legitimate duty. In statecraft, a president’s security directly affects political stability and investor confidence. Initial emergency protocols to seal off the presidency make sense to avoid administrative paralysis.
Yet history warns how easily security emergencies shift to authoritarian crackdowns.
In September 1972, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos staged a false-flag attack on Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile’s motorcade to declare Martial Law.
He bypassed constitutional term limits, jailed opponents like Benigno Aquino Jr, and locked in 14 years of dictatorship under the banner of national security. Indonesia cannot let presidential protection swallow justice for civilian victims.
The criminal investigation into Listyo and his network is a litmus test for genuine police reform in the country. If accountability stops at swapping out personalities, this so-called purge of Listyo’s faction will merely reproduce the same abuses under different management.
The Indonesian government needs an independent inquiry committee chaired by a respected retired Supreme Court justice, backed by legal experts and human rights bodies. Internal police reviews cannot establish credibility when the institution itself sits in the dock.
The Watergate scandal of 1972 offers the guiding precedent. When the Nixon administration tried to contain the break-in probe internally, the truth only surfaced through an independent Senate committee and a special prosecutor with subpoena power.
That inquiry proved the burglary was not an isolated prank, but a systemic weaponisation of federal intelligence agencies against political opponents. Indonesia requires that same structural independence.
Created outside police and intelligence command chains, this independent body must inspect full LIMS server logs and notify all 6,000 victims whose privacy was invaded.
Only transparent accountability can turn this crisis into lasting structural reform rather than another selective purge.
The end goal must remain absolute: creating a democracy where citizens speak, write, organise and live without looking over their shoulders at state wiretaps. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
Usman Hamid is executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia and expert council chairman of the Indonesian Bar Association.
