Government Official Confirms Google Public DNS Blocking

Hot! We have just got a confirmation from Ir. Bambang Heru Tjahjono M.Sc, the Director General of the Department of Application and Information Technology Ministry of Communications and Informatics, regarding the issue of public DNS blockade by the Government. In contrary to one of his staffer who denies any blockade being made, Mr. Tjahjono strongly emphasized that the governement is in fact blocks the access through public DNS which doesn’t fit the requirements set by the Trust+ program by the ministry. This was confirmed recently through an email Mr Tjahjono sent to DailySocial.

“Ever since the Ministry’s regulation No. 19-2014 was enforced, the Ministry of Communication and Information has never allowed any usage of any DNS which doesn’t support the filtering database of Trust+, so it is not only applicable for Google's DNS,”

Ir Bambang Heru Tjahjono M.Sc, Director General APTIKA, Ministry of Communication and Informatics

He further added that this attempt is made to anticipate the misuse of alternative DNS, as many people tend to use it to access negative content from the internet. Prior to this, he took his policy towards Biznet as an example. “This blockage is made to restrict the users from misusing the Biznet DNS, since many of them use it to access content which are prohibited by Biznet and other licensed national ISPs,” he stated.

This blockage is definitely rooted from the government’s attempt to support their Healthy Internet Campaign. The Ministry itself relies on the Trust+ program by Nawala DNS to filter out negative content from the internet. Unfortunately, sometimes the program stretched a bit to far. Just take a look at Vimeo and Reddit. Those two websites have to accept the reality that they’re being classified into the same category as porn and betting sites which, definitely, need to get ruled out in the first place.

“It’s necessary to figure out that 90% of sites listed on the Trust+ database are porn sites, and they’re restricted according to both ITE and Porn Acts. That kind of restriction can also be met in other countries like Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Europe,”

As one of regulators who administer Indonesia’s internet ecosystem, he also encouraged people to file a report should they find any local ISP that has yet applied the Trust+ database into their DNS system. Well, as far as we know, only Biznet and Telkom Speedy who have done so.