Hungry for Data

In a dream, John Doe, Herve Daniel Marel Falciani, and Stephanie Gibaud appeared and asked: "What is the law of stealing, leaking public data, or what is perceived as public data, from public or private institutions, for public interest?" The three are instrumental and known as thieves of public/private data or information.

Remember the Panama Papers? John Doe, a pseudonym, was the key person behind the circulation of the Panama documents. Who John Doe was exactly, we do not know. He broke into the database of the customers or clients of law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Mossack Fonseca provides financial secrecy services for individual and corporate clients, including building shell companies in a number of secretive areas. The services being offered cover /disguising client identities, legalizing illegal funds/assets, disguising/closing the origin of funds/assets, including -- if necessary -- offering political asylum services. This law firm is based in Panama, one of the world\'s leading secretive regions.

KOMPAS/DIDIE SW

.

Secretive regions

In 2015, Panama was ranked the 13^th-most secretive area. In 2018, it dropped to  12th position. Now, however, Panama is more friendly and cooperative. Panama has signed the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the automatic exchange of information regarding the common report standard.

The magnitude of data stolen by John Doe reached 11.5 million secret documents created from the 1970s to 2016. A number of our officials and politicians were listed in the documents. After hacking into Mossack Fonseca, he contacted Bastian Obermayer, a German newspaper reporter of Suddeutsche Zeitung. Later, Obermayer contacted and requested the assistance of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to verify and publish the data. After being deemed not to be problematic, the documents were first published on April 3, 2016.

More than 18 months later, on November 5, 2017, the ICIJ again published the Paradise Papers. This time, the law firm that was burglarized was Appleby, which had offices in a number of British-controlled secretive areas: Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Caymans Islands, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Mauritius, Seychlelles, Hong Kong and also Shanghai.

The Paradise documents, among other things, contained information about the investment and business of the Royal Family of England in the secretive areas. Ivan Danilov, a Russian economist and political analyst, mentioned George Soros as the mastermind behind the Paradise documents.  The ICIJ called it the Soros Leaks. The reason, according to him, was that ICIJ had also been funded by Soros.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Lagarde List would have never existed if there was no Falciani, 47. He -- an information technology specialist working for the HSBC branch in Geneva, Switzerland -- was charged with stealing data the data of 130,000 customers who were suspected of committing tax crimes and money laundering. The Lagarde List is taken from the name of former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who is now the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The data he stole was sent to Lagarde. Later, Lagarde sent it to a number of governments, the citizens of which had their names listed. In November 2014, the French authorities charged HSBC with money laundering. On December 11, 2014, Falciani was tried in absentia on charges of breaching bank secrecy and business espionage. The Swiss Federal Court demanded that Falciani be sentenced to five years in prison.

At the request of the Swiss authorities, Falciani was detained by the Spanish authorities. The Swiss authorities requested that Falciani be extradited. However, the request was turned down because allegations of the crime directed at Falciani were not subject to Spanish court persecution.

In terms of gender, not all thieves/those leaking the data were male. Here we know Stephanie Gibaud (SG). SG works as UBS Communications and Marketing Manager. She played an important role in exposing the practice of tax evasion and money laundering of tax crime proceeds by UBS Group AG.

The UBS business group is a Swiss multinational company that deals with financial services and investment in the banking sector. Different from John Doe and Falciani, SG did not produce documents similar to the Panama documents, Paradise documents or Lagarde List. Information stolen by SG was useful to the French authorities in dealing with tax and money laundering crimes.

The question of the three persons may also be relevant to hackers, who broke into public institution sites to get monthly cash reports on West Java province and the Bandung city government. From the report data, detailed data on the Regional Budget and Expenditure funds in the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years deposited by the governor of West Java and mayor of Bandung was discovered. After being  processed, the stolen data gives important information about the alleged malpractice of the fund management deposits of the West Java provincial government and Bandung city administration.

I hack, so that I exist

It seems that the theft of public data for disclosure of cases of corruption and other financial crimes may be widespread. Why?

First, Law No. 14 of 2008 on Public Information Openness (KIP Law) has reached the peak of its achievement. It is characterized by two things. First, in metaphorical language, to the extent of the effectiveness of the KIP Law, it can only expose a skirt or sarong so that only the legs are visible. In reality, the freedom of information act should create a public institution that is completely transparent.

Second, defiance of public institutions against court decisions to open data requested by the applicants.

Second, if the theft/burglary of the data becomes a court case, the wise, knowledgeable judge whose heart is still beating will possibly release the data thieves/burglars. My mother\'s bedtime tale could be”jurisprudence". Once upon a time, there was a judge who cheerfully freed a thief. The judge came to an  understanding that the hunger and structural hunger had led him to steal. Therefore, besides setting him free, the judge also sent a letter to the king, reminding him to make sure no one was hungry and starving all over the country.

Third, the strengthening of witness protection. Julian Paul Assange, founder of Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden -- a former CIA employee and former US government contract staff member -- who stole and leaked data and information from the National Security Agency, are now well-protected, each by the Ecuadorean and Russian governments.

If so far the protection is still casuistic and involves a single state, in the future it must be institutionalized. This is also what SG proposes to G-20 country leaders to have systematic and organized protection for data thieves like herself. We already have Law No. 13/2006 on Protection of Witnesses and Victims. So actually, stealing/breaking into public data for public interest is quite safe and protected.

Therefore, public data hackers will philosophize, "I hack, so that I exist."

Dedi Haryadi, Chairman of Beyond Anti Corruption