Indonesian Operators Have Used Gemalto SIM Card

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kemenkominfo) finally announced the provisional investigation results on five operators related to wiretaping issue by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) through Sim Cards issued by Gemalto N.V.

"XL, Tri Indonesia, Telkomsel and Indosat have used Gemalto's SIM Card. But they assert did not find any leakage in the SIM cards and ensure the SIM Card providers they used is in compliance with GSM Security Standard," said Head of Information and Public Relations of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Ismail Cawidu in Jakarta, Tuesday (17/3).

Unfortunately, Cawidu did not provide details of the outstanding total of SIM cards circulated by the four operators who are using Gemalto's products. Also the illegal wiretaping certainty on Gemalto's SIM Card within the 2010 span.

"The Ministry and the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) does not stop their investigations here. We are in the process of improving the regulations specifically related to the registration controls . Evaluation will continue to be made, it is possible also to be formed a monitoring team or task force," Ismail said.

Earlier, in Edward Snowden's document have proven that there are US the British intelligence agencies have done their practice of spying (surveillance) on Gemalto since 2010. (See also: Operators asked to Investigate Wiretaping)

SIM card manufacturer Gemalto is the world's largest and owns an approximately 28.6% market share. The company is based in the Netherlands and became a supplier to a number of famous mobile operators including Verizon, AT & T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and 450 other mobile operators in 85 countries.

SIM Card Infiltration act have made the NSA and GCHQ able to monitor a large part of the communication traffic of mobile users in almost all parts of the world.

Further, Ismali said that operators are asked to used local products to anticipate similar issues to take place.

Ismail said that the government has begun to regulate the issue of Domestic Content Level (DCL) since the begining of the 3G era. "Slowly we are increasing the local content. Well, if there are operators who replaces their device due to related on the wiretaping issue, it's their own business, "he said.

As known that Telkomsel is recently announced to appoint Ericsson to run the transformation of the Operations Support System (OSS) carrying out after entrusted to Amdocs OSS.

Because Amdocs is touted from Israel despite the company is listed in the US, Telkomsel was always exposed to unpleasant security problems issues since 2010.

"I see that Telkomsel is not satisfied by Amdocs performance and now switching to Ericson. Related to many assumptions to Amdocs which difficult to prove," Ismail concluded. (es)