Jakarta – With pornographic content flooding the internet, the government is set to use a censorship machine starting next year to surf the net to block porn.
The machine would begin operations in January after a handover process on Dec. 29, Communications and Information Ministry's information applications director general Samuel Abrijani said.
"The control room is located on the eighth floor of the Ministry's office," he said on Monday as reported by Antaranews.com.
The censorship machine uses a "crawling" system to automatically analyze inappropriate content based on inputs and categories set by the ministry. Samuel said the system was different to surveillance.
"Crawling is not meant for surveillance, in which we monitor [activities] silently, but looks for the [inappropriate content]," he said adding that the ministry would not use it for surveillance measures against people.
Besides aiming to block pornographic content, the machine could also be used by request by other institutions such as the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) to look for narcotics related content or the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency to search for unregistered food and drugs sold to the public.
The ministry acquired the machine worth Rp 211 billion (US$15.6 million) through a tender process in August.
Reports have said that the country is among the top three in world for the number of residents who access pornographic content via the internet. (vla/rin)