Amid concerns about privacy and security on the Internet, the Indonesian Ministry of Education recently put up a detailed database of students online and in downloadable files. There are at least 36 million students listed on the Web site in Excel files containing names, dates, places of birth and addresses!

I got the breaking news the last weekend from Treespotter's blog. He wrote:

The database was put online a while ago, but Google had already indexed it by now--if you have kids at school (private, public and religious schools all)--you can try Googling them to see what comes out. You can find the FULL FILES in XLS downloadables without too much trouble. Of your children.

As I wrote in my blog, the Government's blunder just confirms one thing: They have a lack of capacity and capability in optimizing the New Media benefit. They may have good intent to put online a complete database, but clearly aren't aware about the issues of privacy and security. How could they publish the complete addresses and details (even the dates of births) on their Web site?

I downloaded one of its Excel files at that time, and got a shock reading all details of Indonesian students there! Today, as of publishing this post, the downloadable database is still there. (I will not post any link here for obvious reasons).

Some the countries' eMom bloggers have confirmed that the database is valid. "My son's name is there! I've checked," said a woman reader.

A reader on my blog, Andy OrangeMood, said that they [the Government] are like a child with a gun, don't know what they can do with that. "Sadly, they will and must 'learn' or someone must 'teach' them," he said. "Why am I getting the feeling that this is just the beginning of something terrible?.. Hopefully, I am wrong, tho. Damn," Avianto commented.

"Hopefully, it will be removed quickly," said Pitra. "I think what we should agree upon is NOT stopping until they take down the data," added Fajar Jasmin.

After the news hit the blogosphere over the weekend, the Detiknews portal picked up the story today. Do you know what the government official response was?

"Tapi ini kan masih sebatas kekhawatiran, sudah terbukti belum? Kalau sudah terbukti silahkan diinformasikan, kami di diknas siap menampung keluhan [But this is still a concern, has it proved already? If proved, please let us know, we will accommodate the complaints]," Muhajir, the departement's PR officer, told Detikcom.

What? You mean let's wait until one of our children gets kidnapped or becomes a paedophile's victim?

Enough is enough.

UPDATE (October 14, 2008): The details (addresses and DOBs) have been removed from the list. But the next task is asking Google to remove this from its caches.

 

adriyanto
Level:
Indonesia

amir101
Level:

kukuhtw
Level:

rendy
Level:
Indonesia

sandynata
Level:
Indonesia