Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – The National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) is asking for a period of public comment on the bill reforming the nation's intelligence community that is currently under deliberation at the House of Representatives.
"The intelligence bill will define strategic policy for the administration, but carries with it problems. That's why [the House] should allow ample time for discussion," Komnas HAM chairman Ifdhal Kasim said over the weekend in Medan, North Sumatra.
Ifdhal said the discussion on the intelligence bill should allow for public comment and stipulate a deadline for enacting the oft-delayed bill into law.
The bill, which the House promised to pass in July, would grant the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) wide-ranging authority to intercept private communications.
The government previously said that intelligence and law enforcement agencies needed the authority to monitor private communications to tackle radicals and terrorists.
Ifdhal, however, said that the bill evoked the authoritarian practices of the New Order and that there was a potential for BIN to abuse its arrest authority under the bill.
"This is a heritage from the past. It appears that we have difficulty in disengaging ourselves from the old regime when people were arrested without due process," Ifdhal said.
The bill must ensure that the nation's intelligence agencies operated democratically so that the people would not again be abused by members of the intelligence community, he said. "To place intelligence in the framework of democracy, we must uphold human rights."
The government has proposed that the BIN be allowed to intercept the communications of anyone deemed a threat to state security without prior court approval, including telephone calls, text messages, faxes, emails and social networking postings.
Intelligence officers would also be allowed to conduct "intensive questioning" of anyone suspected of engaging in terrorism, separatism, espionage, subversion, sabotage or other threats to national security.
Ifdhal said only the police should have arrest authority while wiretap approvals should be approved by the courts.