Tackling Cyber Crime related to Illegal Wildlife Trade through Indonesia’s Cyber Patrol Team

CIWT Indonesia Project
Published: 19 January 2023
Last edited: 23 January 2023
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Summary

The increasing use of internet has affected the pattern of Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT), where online transactions have been sharply rising.This poses challenges for law enforcement officers to accurately target the perpetrators. Considering this trend, the project supported the government to establish and operationalize a Cyber ​​Patrol Team. Comprising 12 young and energetic Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF)’s staff, supported by a cyber wildlife ​surveillance expert, equipped with the skills and sufficient infrastructure, the team continuously monitor, analyse and report any indication of IWT online transaction.The Cyber Patrol Team's work, through timely identification, detection, and profiling of illegal social media accounts used for IWT activities, has helped law enforcement officers to better target the perpetrators of IWT, which otherwise would be difficult to locate efficiently. There is also enhanced collaboration between MoEF with the Indonesian National Police. 

 

Classifications

Region
Southeast Asia
Scale of implementation
National
Ecosystem
Forest ecosystems
Tropical evergreen forest
Theme
Local actors
Poaching and environmental crime
Species Conservation and One Health Interventions
Risk communication, community engagement and behaviour change
Challenges
Loss of Biodiversity
Poaching
Lack of technical capacity
Sustainable development goals
SDG 15 – Life on land
Aichi targets
Target 1: Awareness of biodiversity increased

Location

Indonesia

Impacts

For the law enforcement officers, the work of the Cyber Patrol Team provides them with information-based decisions making and strategic planning for arrest operations, which otherwise would be very challenging given the high number and geographically wide distribution of IWT online transactions. In 2021, the Cyber Patrol Team monitored 2,972 social media and e-commerce posts related to IWT content, as compared to 363 similar posts monitored in the previous year without the Cyber Patrol team in place. By collaborating with the Ministry for Communication and Information, the team managed to delete 209 online trading accounts and remove 2,355 trading contents related to IWT. The work of the cyber patrol team has also benefited the community, as tackling online IWT cases efficiently contributes to better handling of human-wildlife interactions, which in turn reduces risks of zoonotic disease infections. For the ecosystems, through more efficient and strengthened law enforcement actions, indirectly, the work of the Cyber Patrol Team has helped to keep wildlife stay in the wild and preserve balanced ecosystems.

Contributed by

wiene.andriyana_42524's picture

CIWT Indonesia Project United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Other contributors

UNDP Indonesia
CIWT Indonesia Project