Walid Saddat Raffat
Bangladesh is a country on the rise. In terms of population, economy, and global influence it is growing faster than any other country in the world. Along with everything else, technological adaptation is on the rise as well. With country going further with digitisation new risks and vulnerabilities are arising alongside. Among them cybercrime is one of the major threats. According to a leading cyber security farm McAfee, revealed that in recent years the cybercrime is costing the world more than 1 trillion dollars and it is getting higher each year.
According to an analysis done by Kepios it shows that there were 52.58 million internet users in Bangladesh both directly and indirectly involved using the service till January 2022. The internet user rate came up around 31.5 percent of the total population. According to Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory commission (BTRC), from may to June the increased by 3.4 million and the number of broadband user increased from 107.50 million to 110.90 million. That is the highest ever rise in one month that the country has ever seen.
It is a matter of fact that the internet technology is years ahead of our policy and it is true for every other country in the world. And people involved in cybercrime are not like our regular smalltime criminals. They are well educated and talented individuals who are very good at handling technologies. To deal with them head to head, the authority needs to appoint specialists who are experts at it. They need to make sure that special sets of exams and trainings are organized before appointing people to such positions. Even though the ICT division of Bangladesh is working very hard to deal with such crisis it is never enough because it is a global crisis and every other country is struggling.
However, Bangladesh have passed the Information Technology Act or the ICT Act 2006, which later amended in 2013, where it is directed that violation of any provisions may lead up-to 10 years of imprisonment or a fine not exceeding more than 10 million taka or both. The amendment was definitely a extraordinary move from government but it was done years ago and this is 2022. If we consider the development and expansion of the internet alongside the technological advancement our laws and regulations are far behind. This technology has developed beyond our imagination and even introduced virtual currencies like Crypto, NFT and even virtual worlds like Metaverse which enables us getting expose to newer versions of digital crimes.
The European Union, The African Union and other developed countries are quite agile to defend against this newest form of digital crimes. Even though they have put the cyber security issue at the top of their agenda it is still not enough. However, they are working towards building a cyber security ecosystem to protect their citizens and the countries assets from the cybercriminals. They have adopted groundbreaking legislations like NIS (Network and Information security), GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the European Union Cyber security Act. Even that we have our very own ICT act, it is not equipped enough to be updated with the technology at the same pace. Moreover, lack of legal experts the sector and poor understanding of ICT of our cybercrime prevention and protection sector is making it much worse.
Undoubtedly, our domestic laws are not competitive enough when it comes to protect the users from criminals but it is even harder for the respective authorities to protect them from the international threats as the technology is not at all bound by the international borders. The biggest example of that we can put on the table is the “Bangladesh Bank Heist” in 2016, where North Korean hackers stole 81 million dollars from our Central Bank. The government filed a case in the international court of justice to get some remedy but it did not help much. This hack was so unique that Legal departments of foreign Universities included the case in their course work.
Notwithstanding, as more Bangladeshi’s are becoming connected nationally and internationally through internet, the misuse of personal data via social media networks, dominance of fake news and the absurd growth of cybercrimes are increasing proportionately. The traditional ways of creating or enacting laws will forever fail because, we are nothing but a garden snail comparing to the forever growing speed of the cyber world. So, it is obvious that our policy makers need to introduce a proper balancing act to monitor and ensure that people are protected from any kind of cyber crime and also allowing the government to deal with any sort of threat without interfering with freedom of people by appointing expert individuals in the respective field.
