On 24 September 2026, Deputy Minister of Communication and Digital Angga Raka Prabowo called a circulating "warning letter" announcing a nationwide internet shutdown from 25 to 27 September "pure forgery and fake news". He said no such plan existed, and that internet services, messaging apps, banking, ATMs and mobile networks would keep running (Katadata). The letter carried the number B-486/KKD/HM.01.02/09/2026 and a forged signature of Minister Meutya Hafid.
The ministry was right to deny it. But the forgery only worked because Indonesians found it plausible, and that plausibility rests on a legal architecture that deserves scrutiny.
The case for the state's powers
Governments have a serious argument for emergency network powers. Viral disinformation can incite violence faster than courts can sit. Indonesia is a sprawling archipelago where illegal content such as child sexual abuse material, terrorism propaganda and online gambling can reach millions quickly, and regulators argue that speed matters more than process in those cases. Komdigi reports that its Content Moderation Compliance System, known as SAMAN, processed takedowns of more than 2.8 million items between 20 October 2024 and 16 September 2025, about 2.1 million of them gambling-related (CNN Indonesia). Few would defend gambling spam as protected speech. That is the strongest case for the current system.
What the law actually permits
The shutdown power is not hypothetical. Article 40(2b) of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, as amended in 2016, authorises the government to cut access, or to order platforms to cut access, to electronic information containing unlawful content. In Decision 81/PUU-XVIII/2020, pronounced on 27 October 2021, the Constitutional Court rejected a challenge brought by journalists from Suara Papua and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI). That challenge grew out of the August 2019 Papua blackout (Global Voices; decision summary). Seven of nine judges sided with the government. The two dissenters, Suhartoyo and Saldi Isra, did not deny the power. They argued only that the government should owe affected users a written explanation, such as a formal administrative decision or a written notice, so that accountability is possible. Even that modest safeguard was not required.
The Court's reasoning treats the blocking power as legitimate and leaves procedure to implementing rules. The government's own legal database lists the decision (JDIH Komdigi). In practice, those rules do not add an independent check.
SAMAN: speed without a judge
The daily workhorse is not a national blackout but SAMAN, which Komdigi describes as an escalating ladder. A takedown notice goes first, followed by three warning letters, administrative fines, and finally a full service blockade in Indonesia. Platforms must respond within four hours for urgent content and 24 hours otherwise (Antara). Those deadlines trace to Ministerial Regulation 5/2020, which Freedom House notes defines prohibited content broadly, including material that creates "community anxiety" or disturbs public order, with fines or blocking for non-compliance (Freedom House).
The structural problem is that every step in that ladder is administrative. A ministry officer identifies the content, a ministry system issues the order, and the platform complies on a clock too short for meaningful legal review. Komdigi's own director general said of the first two weeks of SAMAN in February 2025 that no platform resisted and all complied immediately. That is efficient. It is also what a system looks like when nobody has the practical ability or incentive to say no. Platform appeals exist, but they go back to the same agency.
Why the forgery was believable
The hoax is a measure of public trust. People did not ask whether the government could shut down the national internet in a legal sense. They asked whether it would, and thought the answer might be yes. Indonesia has a recent history of throttling networks during unrest, the courts have declared that power constitutional, and the day-to-day takedown machinery has no judicial gate. A credible government is one whose emergency powers are bounded enough that a fake order looks fake.
There is a second concern in the official response. Angga Raka invoked Article 45A(3) of Law 1 of 2024, the ITE Law's criminal provision on false electronic information causing public unrest, against whoever forged the letter (Katadata). Prosecuting a genuine forger impersonating a minister is defensible. But the same "false information" provision is broad enough that civil society has long worried about its use against critics, and the episode shows the state reaching for criminal law before transparency.
A proportionate fix
None of this requires abolishing the powers. Proportionate reform would be modest:
- Written, reasoned orders. Adopt the standard the Court's two dissenters described: every blocking or throttling order should be a written decision stating its legal basis, scope and duration.
- Prior or prompt judicial review. Reserve the four-hour track for narrow, enumerated categories such as child exploitation and terrorism. For anything touching political speech or network-wide restrictions, require court authorisation or review within a fixed number of days.
- Public registers. Publish orders, including shutdown orders, so that a forged letter can be checked against an authoritative list. A government that publishes every real order makes fake ones easier to debunk.
- Sunset clauses. Any regional or network-wide throttling should expire automatically unless renewed with reasons.
The forged letter caused panic over a weekend and was debunked within a day. The next one may come when trust is lower and the government's real power is exactly as unchecked as it is today. Open-internet policy should aim to make the legitimate use of these powers rare, reasoned and reviewable, so that a hoax about them is no longer plausible.