Sajeeb Wazed Joy, grandson of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and IT advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said that the new Digital Security Act is being criticized from some quarters. Their main objection is to certain sections of the act. I had the opportunity to see the drafts of the act when the ICT Division prepared them. Journalists who do not intend to publish false news have nothing to fear from this act. He said this in a Facebook post.
Sajeeb Wazed Joy wrote, "The need for a law on hacking and secret surveillance of government office computers is to protect the information and privacy of the public. Before this law, there was no legal basis in the country to take action against hacking and data theft. So how will hacking and data theft be prosecuted without the help of this law? Government computers store a lot of information about citizens, including their national identity cards. Bank accounts, health information, land records, c level contact list everything is being digitized and collected these days. If these are hacked, who will take responsibility? But then the responsibility will fall on the government. Therefore, as an IT advisor, I recommend the enactment of this law to prevent hacking."
Not only that, but through digital surveillance in government offices, it is also possible to take pictures or videos of various documents or records containing public information. It is also possible to overhear many sensitive discussions of citizens through secret audio recordings, even Wi-Fi passwords.
This may make a journalist's job more difficult. But should a journalist have the right to hack into a government office computer to steal sensitive information about citizens in order to expose someone's corruption? No country in the world allows journalists to illegally collect information, not even the United States or the European Union. Secret surveillance of government offices is illegal in all countries, even for journalists. Journalists have to get their information from other sources.
I would like to ask a question to the diplomatic missions that have raised objections to this law: can journalists bring secret surveillance equipment inside your embassy?
Another objection is the section on distorting the history of our Liberation War. We have seen how after August 15, 1975, BNP-Jamaat has made an evil attempt to distort the history of our Liberation War and the events of the life of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The reason behind this distortion was to make war criminals ministers and establish Bangabandhu's murderers. Shouldn't there be a law against these? Do we want to see this unpolitics repeated again in the future? Those who are speaking against this section of the law are not actually Bengalis. They are secretly Jamaat supporters Razakars.
This section is based on the European Union's Holocaust denial law. In 16 European countries, even saying that fewer people died in the Holocaust than the "accepted number" is punishable by imprisonment. Many of these countries have embassies in Bangladesh that have raised objections to our law.
My question to the European embassies that have raised objections to our law is, if you can have a Holocaust denial law, why can't we have a similar law? If our laws are not consistent with UN and other human rights standards, then how can yours be? No amendment is possible in this section.
Part of this law is against inciting violence or religious fanaticism through falsehoods or rumors online. You remember, in Ramu, a whole Buddhist village was attacked and destroyed through a false post on Facebook about burning the Holy Quran. Such incidents have happened more than once in our country. We have also seen how violence was being incited through rumors spread online during the recent student movement. Without this law, how will we prevent such incidents of inciting violence?
Our existing criminal law has some provisions on this. Under that law, if you say or write something that causes someone to physically harm someone, then you can be prosecuted under that law. Without this digital safety law, you have to wait until someone actually gets hurt. Should we wait until someone gets hurt? Or should we focus on preventing such incidents from happening? Such laws exist in every country in the world, including the United States.
Many European countries have laws against spreading hatred and inciting violence, and our law is similar.
Another objection that is being raised is that under this law, anyone can be arrested and searched without a warrant for criminal activity. A warrant is only needed after the crime has already been committed. When a crime is committed, an arrest and search can be carried out without a warrant from the scene. This is a fundamental point of criminal law in all countries, including ours. If you call the police to report a theft, do the police wait for a warrant or do they immediately arrest the thief and search for the stolen goods? Similarly, if the police receive information about online hacking and find the location of the hacker, should they wait for a warrant or stop him immediately?
In most countries, including the United States, if the police can track someone online while they are committing a crime, they can arrest and search them without a warrant. Only if the arrest or search is to be carried out after the crime has been committed, a warrant is required. A warrant is never required if the person is caught in the act of committing a crime.
Finally, objections have been raised about the section on tarnishing the image of the state. I agree, here the court has been given the power to determine truth and falsehood. But, in this case, we have to remember the recent history of the country. No organization of journalists, including the Press Club, the Editors' Council, has been able to implement their own code of ethics or code of conduct. The current head of the Editors' Council, Mahfuz Anam, who admitted on television to spreading false and purposeful news against our Prime Minister during 1/11.
In the US or the European Union, he would have been forced to resign from the journalism profession. Not only that, he would never have been given a position as an editor or journalist again. In Bangladesh, however, the Editors' Council has elected him as their General Secretary on his behalf. This surprises me. Since the EU and US missions have expressed their views on this law, I hope they will also express their views on Mahfuz Anam's continued service as an editor of a leading newspaper after his confession. Otherwise, their actions will be one-sided and amount to interference in our internal affairs.
What does this tell us about the ethics of the Editors' Council? Clearly, they have no ethics. In fact, the Editors' Council wants to say that they should be allowed to run dirty, false campaigns against the government and try to remove politicians they dislike without resorting to the truth. If they are planning such a thing against Sheikh Hasina, then where does the future of the country stand?
Since media editors are not willing to abide by their own ethical guidelines, we leave the task of determining truth to the courts. Arrest does not mean imprisonment. The government must prove that the accused knowingly published false information. The burden of proof is on the government. Journalists who do not intend to publish false news have nothing to fear.
If the Editors' Council wants to amend these articles, they must implement their own code of ethics. The editor or journalist who published false news must be removed from his duties and arrangements must be made to ensure that he can never again produce or disseminate news in the future.