Crackdown on internet users in Bangladesh
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Visit http://www.e-bangladesh.org/ [for the latest]
[An E-Bangladesh exclusive.]
RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) members assisted by BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) officials are conducting house-to-house searches in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet pinpointing each and every internet user with a fast connection. In an unprecedented move that clearly violates privacy rights and threatens freedom of speech and communication, a special cell comprising RAB and BTRC officials are now collecting user details — name, address, login and usage statistics — from all the ISPs (Internet Service Provider) in order to profile more than 450,000 internet subscribers in the country.
Officials from different ISPs in Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong have confirmed to E-Bangladesh that they were verbally instructed late September by the authorities to:
A memo issued by BTRC that instructed ISPs to share/reveal sensitive private data of internet users, business details and technical information was leaked to E-Bangladesh. This memo, BTRC/E&O/ISP-Gen.(302)/2007-1697 , issued on September 26, was signed by Dilshat Ara Shela, Assistant Director Engineering & Operations, BTRC. It instructed and advised 72 ISPs in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet:
"ISPs must have complete information regarding the exact location of the client," the memo advised. Failure to comply with BTRC demands may result in closure of the ISP, it warned.
A senior BTRC official, on condition of anonymity, claimed to E-Bangladesh that BTRC is assisting RAB members in their crackdown on illegal VOIP operators. He could not, however, explain why regular home users are being targeted.
In Dhaka, in the last week of September, a broadband user in a residential area received, as he described to E-Bangladesh in an email, "uninvited guests:" 5 plainclothes RAB men and 2 BTRC officials.
They said they were looking for VOIP equipments… Clearly they saw I did not have any of those. Still a RAB member was asking me questions and taking notes, like, what I do in real life and internet etc… I doubted if those people even knew anything about VOIP, they were checking my computer… Even my MSN Messenger and Skype contact lists were checked… How could I explain to someone who did not even know about voice chats?
Similar reports of RAB visits to internet users in Chittagong and Sylhet have been confirmed. One user in Sylhet expressed his frustration via email,
Is it a crime, to have an internet connection? They were misbehaving even when they wanted to check my computer. I was telling them I did not do any VOIP business then why check my computer… No one is talking about this. Now if my sister wants to use internet RAB will come and search for her, what nonsense is this?
[Translated from Bengali.]
In another email, a System Administrator of one of the ISPs told E-Bangladesh,
If this continues then using internet in Bangladesh will become a crime sometime soon. We have to shut down our business. These people [RAB] enter our server rooms without permission and ask stupid questions and misbehave. I was informed by my sources inside BTRC that these house-to-house searches will intensify from next Thursday. If they go to people's houses like this they will stop using internet out of fear.
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If I have to reveal my admin password, user logins and passwords, what kind of service am I going to provide? Where in world they have found this formula?
The ISP Association of Bangladesh — umbrella organization of internet service providers – could not be contacted. BTRC officials declined to issue any official explanation. Repeated attempts to contact RAB headquarters in Dhaka for its version of the story failed.
29 responses so far ↓
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It is not only sad, but frustrating and anger provoking as well. For an "educated" government like this one, it is unthinkable that they would try to monitor internet activities. Good for us though, our kids in Bangladesh know their stuff so well that they can (and will) still do stuff to inform the rest of the world about what is happening even with so much monitoring. Jago Bangali!
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Unprecedented and taking a very dangerous turn. We seem to be heading in Burma's direction.
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The speech of FUA at the UN was bullshit, the promise given by MUA of going back to barrack was bullshit. We are heading towards Burma-style. Be prepared for another Muktijudho.
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I've previously raised this very issue of Bangladesh becoming a copybook"'1984." Didn't think it would begin so soon!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_ict/message/5002
…..is this [IGW/ICX] the next step to email/www monitoring?? the right to "information access" without fear or monitoring is the fundamental and preeminent element of an open/free society. if we fail to ensure that, we would be one step away from becoming the next Panopticon in Asia like Burma or China…..
This current action is primarily carried out under the purview of an amendment [of 2006] to BTRC Act, 2001 which basically gives blanket wiretapping/monitoring powers to law enforcing agencies. BTRC Act 2001: Amendment 97: a, b, c.
http://www.btrc.gov.bd/act-2001_admen.pdf
Although this amendment contradicts one of BTRC's prime directives: "To ensure protection of the privacy of telecommunication."
BTRC Act, 2001. Para 30(1)(f): http://www.btrc.gov.bd/telecomact.htm
And I'm not sure searching individual private citizens' residences are permitted even under the amended rules! And there may be doubts on the constitutionality of the entire 2006 amendment.
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Once again, our world class journalists from EB are twisting the truth, dramatizing the situation and blowing things out of proportion. This is merely a propaganda war against the reformist government again. What RAB is trying to do is clampdown on illegal VOIP, not on the right to use of internet. I don't believe the story about RAB going home to home, because I have many friends, colleagues and others using broadband all over Dhaka, not a single one of them narrated any story like this. Attempts to paint the BD situation to Burma will be a mistake. Check out today's Washington Post. What is happening in Dhaka is indeed a "silent revolution" against two parties, two leaders, two sons and others involved in rampant corruption, pandering to religious militancy and incompetent governance that has made BD almost a dysfunctional state.
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I still hope there is room for trust amongst us. We are not against or for any party, be it political or military or caretaker. We want freedom of speech but we want responsible use of it too. Also, jumping to conclusions too early too soon may not be a good idea any longer. So lets wait and dig this story. Thanks.
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Echowallah: I think you have very little idea about the actual picture and you have not read this post properly. What you say is irrelevant. E-BD is reporting only based on facts and figures. You may have lots of military friends not civilians. Just go through the report and read it carefully.
– To provide copies of technical agreements with connectivity providers.
– To reveal individual client MRTG URL with user id and password.I think you need to know what is MRTG. With that they will have access to all user details. Now about the VOIP drama. I wrote a lot before on capacity constrain in BTTB. I don't want to divert things here. This issue remains hanging for a longtime pretty much what happened with the independence of judiciary. BTTB and BTRC are the symbols of the corrupt institutions in Bangladesh.
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Yes. My relatives living in Bangladesh have reported similar incidents indeed. I would not go into so much details, but are the BTRC people so damn stupid that they have to go in to houses and offices to check for VoIP equipments? Can't they simply check the graphs? And as far as I have heard, all internet traffic is supposed to be routed through BTTB itself. Whatever the hell they are up to, they are making a big fool of themselves to the international community. Bullocks.
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BTRC memo leaked to E-Bangladesh.
Sexy
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From the New York Times:
Myanmar junta unplugs internet
By SETH MYDANSBANGKOK, Oct. 3 — It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.
Until Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.
But then the images, text messages and postings stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.
"Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down," said Aung Zaw, editor of an exile magazine based in Thailand called The Irrawaddy, whose Web site has been a leading source of information in recent weeks. The site has been attacked by a virus whose timing raises the possibility that the military government has a few skilled hackers in its ranks.
The efficiency of this latest, technological, crackdown raises the question whether the vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government — or whether Myanmar, already isolated from the world, can ride out a prolonged shutdown more easily than most countries.
OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet censorship, has documented signs that in recent years several governments — including those of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — have closed off Internet access, or at least opposition Web sites, during periods preceding elections or times of intense protests.
The brief disruptions are known as "just in time" filtering, said Ronald J. Deibert of OpenNet. They are designed to quiet opponents while maintaining an appearance of technical difficulties, thus avoiding criticism from abroad.
In 2005, King Gyanendra of Nepal ousted the government and imposed a weeklong communications blackout. Facing massive protests, he ceded control in 2006.
Myanmar has just two Internet service providers, and shutting them down was not complicated, said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with Human Rights Watch. Along with the Internet, the junta cut off most telephone access to the outside world. Soldiers on the streets confiscated cameras and video-recording cellphones.
"The crackdown on the media and on information flow is parallel to the physical crackdown," he said. "It seems they've done it quite effectively. Since Friday we've seen no new images come out."
In keeping with the country's self-imposed isolation over the past half-century, Myanmar's military seemed prepared to cut the country off from the virtual world just as it had from the world at large. Web access has not been restored, and there is no way to know if or when it might be.
At the same time, the junta turned to the oldest tactic of all to silence opposition: fear. Local journalists and people caught
transmitting information or using cameras are being threatened and arrested, according to Burmese exile groups.In a final, hurried telephone call, Mr. Aung Zaw said, one of his longtime sources said goodbye.
"We have done enough," he said the source told him. "We can no longer move around. It is over to you — we cannot do anything anymore. We are down. We are hunted by soldiers — we are down."
There are still images to come, Mr. Aung Zaw said, and as soon as he receives them and his Web site is back up, the world will see them.
But Mr. Mathieson said the country's dissidents were reverting to tactics of the past, smuggling images out through cellphones, breaking the files down for reassembly later.
It is not clear how much longer the generals can hold back the future. Technology is making it harder for dictators and juntas to draw a curtain of secrecy.
"There are always ways people find of getting information out, and authorities always have to struggle with them," said Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of "A History of News."
"There are fewer and fewer events that we don't have film images of: the world is filled with Zapruders," he said, referring to Abraham Zapruder, the onlooker who recorded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Before Friday's blackout, Myanmar's hit-and-run journalists were staging a virtuoso demonstration of the power of the Internet to outmaneuver a repressive government. A guerrilla army of citizen reporters was smuggling out pictures even as events were unfolding, and the world was watching.
"For those of us who study the history of communication technology, this is of equal importance to the telegraph, which was the first medium that separated communications and transportation," said Frank A. Moretti, executive director of the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.
Since the protests began in mid-August, people have sent images and words through SMS text messages and e-mail and on daily blogs, according to some exile groups that received the messages. They have posted notices on Facebook, the social networking Web site. They have sent tiny messages on e-cards. They have updated the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
They also used Internet versions of "pigeons" — the couriers that reporters used in the past to carry out film and reports — handing their material to embassies or nongovernment organizations with satellite connections.
Within hours, the images and reports were broadcast back into Myanmar by foreign radio and television stations, informing and connecting a public that hears only propaganda from its government.
These technological tricks may offer a model to people elsewhere who are trying to outwit repressive governments. But the generals' heavy-handed response is probably a less useful model.
Nations with larger economies and more ties to the outside world have more at stake. China, for one, could not consider cutting itself off as Myanmar has done, and so control of the Internet is an industry in itself.
"In China, it's massive," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
"There's surveillance and intimidation, there's legal regulation and there is commercial leverage to force private Internet companies to self-censor," he said. "And there is what we call the Great Firewall, which blocks hundreds of thousands of Web sites outside of China."
Yet for all its efforts, even China cannot entirely control the Internet, an easier task in a smaller country like Myanmar.
As technology makes everyone a potential reporter, the challenge in risky places like Myanmar will be accuracy, said Vincent Brossel, head of the Asian section of the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.
"Rumors are the worst enemy of independent journalism," he said. "Already we are hearing so many strange things. So if you have no flow of information and the spread of rumors in a country that is using propaganda — that's it. You are destroying the story, and day by day it goes down."
The technological advances on the streets of Myanmar are the latest in a long history of revolutions in the transmission of news — from the sailing ship to the telegraph to international telephone lines and the telex machine to computers and satellite telephones.
"Today every citizen is a war correspondent," said Phillip Knightley, author of "The First Casualty," a classic history of war reporting that starts with letters home from soldiers in Crimea in the 1850s and ends with the "living room war" in Vietnam in the 1970s, the first war that people could watch on television.
"Mobile phones with video of broadcast quality have made it possible for anyone to report a war," he said in an e-mail interview. "You just have to be there. No trouble getting a start: the broadcasters have been begging viewers to send their stuff."
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Echowallah: I have a solution to your problem. It might actually work. You can just move on you know. If you think this is biased then do not come here anymore. To me it looks pretty legit as I see lots of proofs right in front of my eyes in this post. Now, if you cannot see the proofs laid in front of you then I must wonder who is actually the biased one here. Also, Echowallah, see, the government will not tell everyone in public that they are going after people with internet connections. They need a bogus thing to cover the real intention. In addition, you can be rest assured that the CTG will not knock into the doors of majority of the people because they are normal public. However, journalists and activists from E-Bangladesh and related sites should be in a bit of problem. In this connection, there is no way your friends will be knocked either Mr. Echowallah because they must be hardcore worshipers of CTG like you. LOL
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It is very bad to invade into private life. Bangladesh government may be inspired by the Burmese junta. I, by my heart, hate this kind of law that is against human rights.
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Echowallah: how do you know what RAB is doing? The document posted above suggests the military government is doing a lot more than what you suggest. Your criticism of EBD would be more credible if you actually countered with facts rather than childish attacks. This seems to fit the pattern of intimidation this government has been engaging in. When all legitimacy fails all that is left is intimidation and fear. So this news does not surprise me.
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Are you serious? You got to be kidding me. Now that freaking media has made a peace deal with government, I wonder where would people go to obtain real news.
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Well, DGFI was trying to hack peoples computer from years ago, but they couldn't because previous governments did not provide any permission to do that. They bought Mobile Interceptor (A device to listen to mobile conversations). But that mobile interceptor didn't worked with Grameen phone. For this they are forcing the mobile operators to record the conversations of any number they want. Now the situation is searching from home to home is really embarrassing to innocent peoples. In our country achieving knowledge is a crime. It will no longer be accepted. It will lead us to civil war.
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The picture painted here is way out of proportion. There is nothing sinister in the RAB/BTRC wanting the check MRTG of a customer. The MRTG graph is vital in detecting VOIP activity and whether it is being done in a business scale. No private information can be leaked from this graph. BTRC wanting to have basic information of internet clients is exactly the same as their requirement for mobile phones. This is not new. RAB searching from home to home for VOIP equipment is a bit hard to believe. They wouldn't be able to do it even if they had 100x the manpower they have now.
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Friends in DS were talking about a program called ESCHELON… something that helps to monitor email exchanges… don't know if they have installed it, but by the sounds of things, it surely seems like something darker and deeper is going on in this land.
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I am sure there is some kind of interference. No doubt. I have given up using the Internet for almost a week. It is frustrating!
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Man! They are going to knock me on to my door and tell "Hey Mr. you are charged with using the internet…We came to verify it and set u free!"
Come on! What will happen to the IT sector of this nation if people cannot use internet at home? Many new stuffs are learnt from home. People will always use internet from home. What is wrong with that? I don't know or understand what got into those people's mind. I hope they think more rationally.
Technology advancement may be there but at the same time if individuals are empowered (a huge advantage of the internet) then advancement is actually enhanced to a great degree.
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This is nonsense, barbaric, uncalled for. This should be stopped. The real face of the caretaker government be uncovered. In the name of clamping down corruption what has been carried out is simple mockery. FUA should seek forgiveness of ordinary people and leave.
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Well I read the whole thread…. What the hell is going on? Where is our privacy? How could they be like this? No wonder… We live in Bangladesh! Damn….
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[…] reports: RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) members assisted by BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory […]
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Guys hold on… it's bad if they start invading into peoples' houses like that… but one thing we have to consider that a lot of VOIP businesses are run from home with a dedicated connection… The way reports are suggesting it sounds like some fools are fooling around in peoples' houses whereas they should be monitoring the traffic and crackdown on unusually hight traffic users… again that should be done based on experts opinions.. not some asshole RAB's opinions… but… really someone has to let them know voice chat and VOIP business is not the same thing… again honestly … we have to stop illegal VOIP businesses… it can be a very good revenue generating sector for the government… not for CTG…. I am saying for any future government… if we get one anytime soon.
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By the way… I don't see any problem about using internet from home… some people are freaking out that this is against using net from home… no it's not… if it was like that, all they had to do was tell the ISP to shutdown… lol… and some people are concerned about their privacy… But guys… anyways some people will always have some control over your user/usage details… its not always as private as you think… so if you are not doing anything illegal… you need not to get panicked… Well don't get me wrong here… I am not a supporter of the so called… CTG …. I strongly doubt they will leave or they have any intention to leave anytime in the near future… but I also don't believe in opposing and misinterpreting anything and everything…
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Though I am late reading in all threads here, any how I have just read it all. It seems to me there are some miscommunication. The Illegal VoIP Expedition Team headed by Director Intelligence RAB, has 4 police officers, 4 Telecom engineers from Teletalk and BTTB, 3 engineers from BTRC and 2 legal members. So the team is well organized and technically efficient. They only conduct raids basing on some information given by somebody. Unfortunately, this information some time may be totally false and ill motivated. They have not started going door to door. Which is even not possible. RAB has only few people say a dozen only for this type of operation. If they have knocked wrong people like the one I read above, may be because of wrong information given by some vested person.
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A while ago we had an individual telling us that they were employed to monitor us. This individual was presumptuous and intimidating. Now, I don't mind their presumption but they intimidate us at their peril. These tactics aren't anything new. We are now seeing the military's true face.
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[…] berichtet von Razzien bei Internetnutzern in Bangladesh: Crackdown on internet users in Bangladesh. Demnach ziehen Staatsvertreter von Haus zu Haus und von ISPs zu ISPs, um alle Internetnutzer zu […]
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Isn't_it_me:
What do you think? If they say you are doing illegal things, can you protest it? I don't think so. Because, what they say, is the only and only matter, not what you/we think. If they say, doing voice chat is related to VOIP and illegal, it's illegal then. If your default Fedora/Linux distribution installs Ekiga soft phone, they will arrest you as a VOIP operator. This will happen because they are IT illiterates.
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There is no point trying to justify any act of this civil-military coalition government. So far their acts have not been pro-people and the on-going operations of finding illegal VOIP operators/e-mail users is only one of the many unprecedented actions to frighten public and ensure that public don't take any position against them. It's just to make sure that their position/power is not being questioned/challenged. The civilian part of this coalition is actually constituted of some spineless characters; only interest of these characters is to secure as much fortune as they can by simply licking the feet of the military. They won't have any concern over people's right to privacy, freedom of speech/ expression and dignity. Because of their total failure, lack of integrity and lack of courage all the advisors of the CTG have lost their legitimacy; in the current situation when they have demonstrated their complete failure, only way for them to save their face is to commit suicide.
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