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The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is facing growing objections to its plan to create a monitoring team with the power to order Internet service providers to block Web sites that contain content it determines is illegal.

Bloggers and media activists say a proposed ministry regulation currently being circulated may violate existing media laws, and poses a threat to freedom of expression in cyberspace. They also say the draft is a knee-jerk reaction to recent publicized cases of Internet abuse, such as the discovery of an online underage child trafficking and prostitution ring in East Java that used Facebook and Yahoo Messenger to find recruits.

Bambang Harymurti, the Press Council’s new deputy chairman, said on Monday that the council would file an official objection with the ministry about the proposed regulation because it had the potential to violate press and broadcasting laws by restricting what journalists could and could not report.

The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) also voiced concerns that the draft regulation would restrict press freedom.

But the ministry’s spokesman, Gatot Dewa Broto, countered that the draft regulation was “not related to the press, since [the monitoring team] will not act as a censorship body that will monitor Web sites on a daily basis.”

“We will not have the [technological] ability to do that anyway,” he added.

Gatot said the Multimedia Content Team would instead act on public complaints about disturbing content, and would only order Internet service providers to block Web sites that it felt were displaying material already banned under Indonesian law.

The 30-member team would include civil servants and private sector staff, so as to prevent abuse of power by the government, he added.

“We did use the Press Law as a reference in drafting the regulation, but in regard to upholding press freedom,” Gatot said, adding that only Internet service providers would face sanctions for allowing access to improper Web content.

“It will be imposed on the Internet service providers, not the press.”

While AJI acknowledged that the draft regulation did refer to the Press Law, it said it did not clearly exempt content provided by media organizations.

“The ambiguous definition of ‘illegal content’ poses a threat to the press because Clause 3 in the draft states that pornographic content is illegal, while there is no definition of pornography in the draft and this is open to multiple interpretations,” AJI said in a press release.

Communication Minister Tifatul Sembiring, currently on an official trip to Europe, is a member of the conservative Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) who has previously spoken out against illicit content on television and the Internet. He once publicly claimed that natural disasters were a consequence of immoral television programming.

Noted Indonesian blogger Enda Sumarsono said that the draft did not specify what action would be taken should the monitoring body find disturbing content on extremely popular, foreign-based Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

“They might [propose] to block access to those Web sites as well,” he said. “I think this draft mainly deals with tackling the negative effects of the Internet, and it does not talk about prevention or empowerment.”

Gatot said the draft regulation remained open for public comment and debate until Friday.

“We may extend the deadline, but we may also close it by Friday and rework it further with the responses we’ve received,” he said. “Once we come up with a new proposal, we will introduce it again for public debate.”