Its deputy minister, Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah said the government also had the technology to locate persons of interest.

However, despite having such technology at its disposal, the government, he said, had not used it on any Malaysian yet.

“We don’t use the tech on Malaysians,” he told FMT outside Parliament, stressing that such technology was meant to provide the nation with “one of the best cyber defence systems.”

Abu Bakar added the technology was updated constantly to ensure no one would succeed in getting hold of the government’s secrets.

Earlier in the Dewan, he was asked by Makin @ Marcus Mojigoh (BN-Putatan) to state the measures taken by CyberSecurity Malaysia, a cyber security and specialist centre, to protect government information from those who wanted to steal or sell it to a third party, as happened with the Panama Papers leak.

The Panama Papers refer to leaked documents belonging to Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm, that detailed the financial and attorney-client information of over 214,000 offshore entities.

Among the notable individuals named in the documents included Russian President Vladimir Putin, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and footballer Lionel Messi.

Abu Bakar also explained that the government had taken several steps to protect critical national information, including updating encryption infrastructure, which he claimed made it impossible for intruders to hack.