Words & Bites

The Chief Advisor of Bangladesh’s current Caretaker Government is worried as “cyber crime, drug addiction, terrorism and other serious crimes cast negative impact on a large section of juvenile and youths and often ruin their life”. He expressed these concerns to a spellbound audience in Dhaka this evening. Let’s not comment on the other issues, but “cyber crime”? Perhaps he was kidding. One of my friends just pointed out that in a country with such slow internet connection (thanks to our successive governments!), they must be some really special criminals! Mr Chief Advisor, please get real or at least consider firing your script writer.

Or, perhaps you were not kidding after all. Perhaps, you were referring to all those human rights activists, bloggers, syndicate columnists scattered around the world using the internet to expose your two-faced government. In fact, we can see your point and we can understand why you would think them as criminals. And surely I cannot blame you for being worried about the corrupting influence these ruthless mindless cyber criminals are having on our young jubo shomaj in Bangladesh.

Now it kind of makes sense to me why last week your Telecommunications Regulator went through such trouble to make a huge show of the bidding event in Hotel Radisson. Now we can see why you wanted everyone to watch your government issuing licenses to the ‘international gateway’ operators, indicating that “other gateways” (read “control”, “surveillance”, “monitor”; see here and here) are also under way. You have televised the event all over the world to ensure that the cyber criminals do not miss your threat (hardly subtle and not empty anymore) even when they are sipping coffee in their living rooms thousand miles away. Nice touch! Hotel Radisson, huh? I bet the food was excellent.

Knowing that soon your security agencies will have the technical capability to monitor the internet traffic, I am sure your so-called ‘cyber criminals’ at home and abroad are now shaking in their boots, in fear. If I see any of them, I promise I will relay your message, in case they have missed. I will advise them to be very afraid, and to be good boys/girls from now on. In fact I will tell them to be “boy scouts”, as you have so wisely prescribed. Finally, I must admit that I am somewhat relieved that from now on, there will not be any need to send some patriotic servicemen (read ‘army jowans’) in the dead of the night in Sitakundu or Cox’s Bazar to axe the fiber optic lines from the submarine cable. Good for you.

POSTSCRIPT (for everyone else):

For advice on snoop-repellant internet use, check this article and Google for more.