Ismira Lutfia, Jakarta – The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology wants to employ the public as an ally in the battle to eradicate Internet pornography.

Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring on Monday said the ministry would reward citizens who report porn sites to them, though it was unclear what they would receive.

Gatot Dewa Broto, the ministry spokesman, told the Jakarta Globe that they had yet to discuss details of the scheme but it would take into account the quantity of one's complaints lodged to the ministry's call center for offensive content on the Internet.

The ministry can be reached by telephone at 02138997800 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., or by sending an e-mail to aduankonten@depkominfo.go.id.

"We forward those complaints to the Internet service providers and we would consider giving a reward based on the success rate," he said, adding that so far the ministry has managed to identify and block a significant number of porn sites with the help of complaints lodged by the public.

Tifatul claimed on Monday that the ministry has blocked 90 percent of the pornographic Web sites on the Internet.

However, several such sites were still available, including the ones the ministry claimed were blocked in Indonesia since the eve of Ramadan, such as Playboy.com, 17tahun.us, youporn.com and porn.com.

The banned sites were chosen based on lists of most-accessed sites on the ministry's filtering system, as well as from Alexa.com, which ranks Web traffic.

Gatot acknowledged that the ministry's efforts still had loopholes because keywords pinpointing online porn keep changing. "It's a challenge for us since many non-porn related words are now also used as keywords," he said.

Peri Umar Farouk, the resources coordinator of Jangan Bugil Depan Kamera (Don't Get Naked in Front of a Camera), which was one of the 10 civil organizations that backed Tifatul's war on pornography, demanded that the ministry be more open about the mechanism it uses to block Internet sites.

Peri said he was not sure about system the ministry was using because the most popular porn sites are still accessible.

"I think the ministry should publicly announce an accountable list of offensive sites and report it back to the public which ones have and have not been blocked," Peri said.

"Don't just ask the public to report and then leave them unaware of what happened to their complaints," he added, saying the government should compile a list of Web addresses it deemed offensive.

He also cast doubt on the effectiveness of the ministry's call center as part of its effort to protect Indonesian citizens from offensive Internet content.

"The government could adapt China's strategy to list and block those porn sites, as [China] has been able to make 15,000 porn sites inaccessible," Peri said.

[Additional reporting from Antara.]