Coordinating Minister Airlangga Affirms Government Does Not Exchange Data With US

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The President of the United States (US), Donald J. Trump, has publicly leaked the latest trade agreement framework between the US and Indonesia. This agreement includes various important points, including reciprocal rates and digital cooperation commitments between the two countries.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto emphasized that the government did not exchange data with the US. Airlangga said that actually the practice of personal data reservoirs is not new. He imitated the activities of charging data independently by the community when carrying out shopping activities through e-commerce or when creating an account to access Google or Bing. Meanwhile, the US and Indonesia agreement is to make protocols related to the data.

"That's upload data itself and of course this is personal data and for the agreement between Indonesia and America is to make protocols for it. So the finalization has a legal and measurable basis for inter-state personal data traffic," Airlangga said at a press conference in Jakarta, Thursday, July 24.

Later, Indonesia and the US will establish a protocol in the form of a legal basis to protect people's personal data while enjoying cross-border services.

AIRlangga said Indonesia had prepared a protocol similar to the Nongsa Digital Park located in Batam, Riau Islands.

"This is a strong legal basis for protecting the personal data of Indonesian citizens when enjoying the cross border service," continued Airlangga.

For this reason, he emphasized that the government does not practice exchanging public-owned personal data with the US but has been carried out by the community itself

"There is no government exchanging government-to-government data, but it is how these companies can obtain data from each individual," he continued.

Furthermore, AIRlangga also said that this collaboration both brought benefits to the US and Indonesia because they managed to book investment agreements by 12 data polling companies in Indonesia. Airlangga detailed that the company included Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Equinix, and Edge Connex. Meanwhile, Oracle is conducting an assessment to build a dat center in Batam.

"They are targeting investments of up to USD 6 billion," said Airlangga.