Ismira Lutfia – The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on Wednesday assured the public that it would not wiretap conversations taking place on social networking sites.

"We have no authority and no capacity to do that, so we will not be monitoring the social networking sites," ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto said. But he said that due to the open nature of social networking sites, many conversations were already viewable by regular Internet users.

"I assure you once again and as the [ICT] Minister has also repeteadly said, we are not going to monitor social networking sites," he said. He said that other government agencies, such as the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) or the National Police, might access online conversations.

"But it would be within the agency's authority," he said, adding that for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, it would be illegitimate to conduct such monitoring in accordance with the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction Law.

"It is 'haram' for us to do that, and in the law it is clear that it could only be done for a specific purpose and it would require permission from the highest authority of law enforcers," Gatot said.