Indonesia's wiretapping scandal opens a political fault line

For decades, Indonesia's police and intelligence agencies have been accused of spying on politicians, journalists, and activists, Now, a widening scandal involving some of the country's most senior police officers has brought those concerns to the heart of government.

Earlier this month, Indonesian police named four senior officers as suspects in an alleged illegal surveillance operation targeting President Prabowo Subianto and other prominent figures.

Former national police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who is not related to the president, was among the senior officers arrested. The ex-police chief became the president's chief of staff in October, just weeks before the scandal broke.

Investigators claim that officers intercepted communications without proper authorization in 2025 and 2026 and then tried to delete records of the operation.

Suyudi Ario Seto, the new police chief, told a parliamentary panel this week that the surveillance targeted the president, officials within the presidential palace, ministries, state institutions, lawmakers, political party figures, governors, anti-corruption officials, activists and students.

A parliamentary commission is investigating the motive behind the wiretapping operation and trying to uncover whether other senior figures were involved. Meanwhile, the police have opened an investigation into possible treason-related offenses.

Amnesty International has called for investigations to also determine whether the wiretap operation was used to intimidate government critics and weaken civil liberties.

The government has responded by ordering an additional 20,000 troops to Jakarta as a precaution, although there had been no indication that the wiretap is part of a larger campaign intended to bring down Prabowo's administration.

The affair has intensified tensions between Prabowo and his predecessor, Joko Widodo, commonly known as Jokowi, while exposing deeper problems with the powers and political loyalties of Indonesia's security establishment.

"The use of surveillance is actually pretty widespread," Yohanes Sulaiman, an associate professor at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, told DW.

"While there are laws and regulations, they are flouted since there is no regulation on eavesdropping, especially by law enforcement agencies," he added.

Officially, Indonesia's Electronic Information and Transactions Law prohibits unauthorized interception, while other legislation permits surveillance for specified law enforcement and intelligence purposes.

Despite these safeguards against illegal interception, Sulaiman said it could be argued, "that the police and intelligence are essentially unconstrained."

Indonesia's intelligence agencies and law enforcement have long played a role in political competition, Gatra Priyandita, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told DW.

Under Suharto's authoritarian New Order regime, which collapsed in 1998, intelligence agencies were central in monitoring political opponents and suppressing dissent.

After democratization, controversies persisted. In 1999, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation involving then-President BJ Habibie raised concerns about surveillance within the presidential palace itself.

In 2024, the elite counterterrorism unit, Densus 88, was caught surveilling Deputy Attorney General Febrie Adriansyah, who at the time was overseeing major corruption investigations.

But what makes the latest allegations particularly significant is "their apparent scale and the suggestion that surveillance capabilities may have been deployed outside established legal procedures and against the sitting president," Priyandita said.

Since taking office in October 2024, Prabowo, a former special forces general, has sought to consolidate his authority over the country's political and security institutions.

Critics accuse him of accelerating the militarization of civilian government, including through legislation expanding the military's ability to occupy civilian posts.

However, the president inherited a security establishment partly shaped by his predecessor.

In 2024, Jokowi, who couldn't run for office again, backed Prabowo's presidential campaign and his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, became Prabowo's running mate and subsequently vice president.

The Jokowi-Prabowo alliance was decisive for Prabowo's electoral victory, but it also left him governing alongside officials and political networks cultivated during Jokowi's decade in power.

On Thursday, Jokowi's son Gibran resigned as vice president amid a growing controversy over his educational credentials.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court and the country's Supreme Court found that Gibran's overseas high school qualifications fell short of legal requirements for vice presidential candidates, and had been wrongly accepted by election authorities.

The academic credentials probe was apparently not related to the investigations into the wiretapping scandal.

A series of government reshuffles in recent months has also been interpreted as Prabowo's attempt to strengthen his control, especially against some Jokowi loyalists. Listyo, appointed police chief by Jokowi in 2021 and long regarded as close to the former president, was replaced in October.

"Prabowo may have consolidated his political authority since taking office, but that does not necessarily translate into complete control over institutions whose senior leadership and internal networks were shaped under the previous Jokowi government," Priyandita said.

Also, Prabowo may emerge politically stronger if the investigation weakens rival networks within the police. However, replacing one set of political loyalties with another would do little to resolve the underlying problem in the country's security apparatus.

The controversy has renewed calls for reforms that would prevent police surveillance capabilities from becoming instruments of political competition.

Because the latest wiretapping controversy targeted not only the president but also political elites and key civil society actors, "surveillance goes beyond mere politics," Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, told DW.

"It is a calculated and systematic abuse of power," he added.

Fahrizal argued that a fundamental problem lies in the National Police's constitutional and institutional position, which answers directly to the president.

This increases the risk that the police respond to presidential political interests rather than solely to the law.

In November last year, Prabowo established a police reform commission to investigate longstanding concerns about professionalism, governance, and accountability.

However, Fahrizal said former police chief Listyo failed to implement meaningful reforms, with the latest allegations showing the consequences of inadequate oversight.

Fahrizal called for Indonesia to bring its fragmented surveillance regulations together under a unified legal framework, with tighter controls over the interception powers of the police's Criminal Investigation Agency and the Intelligence and Security Agency.

"Internal police reform must urgently address this by restoring professionalism and a proper institutional ethos," Fahrizal said.

Without such changes, divided political loyalties risk becoming a "dangerous virus" spreading through the police and other security institutions, he added.