Destroy young lives, break families
Cyber crime is on the rise across the country, destroying young lives, breaking families and increasing the number of incidents of fraud, under the very nose of the ministry concerned. Although, the government has enacted the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act 2009 that stipulated “a maximum punishment of up to 10 years of imprisonment or a maximum fine of Tk. 10 million, or both” for cyber crime, no effective measures have been taken to combat such crimes.
A university student, on conditions of anonymity, said that she met a boy via Facebook and a relationship developed between them. After she ended up spending some private moments with him at the place of the boy’s friend, the boy started demanding money threatening to post an uncompromising video of her on the internet, which was captured by a hidden camera.
“I told everything to my family members, and gave him the money,” she said.
Like her, many girls are fast becoming the victims of unreported cyber crime. From schoolgirls to housewives—women are the prime target of cyber criminals. In a survey conducted by The Independent, it was found that 55 girls fell victim to cyber crime.
These days, many hackers open fake accounts on Facebook and post offensive picture on other users’ profiles. The hackers also steal personal information, pictures and contact information of users.
Mustafa Jabbar, ICT expert and president of Bangladesh Computer Society (BCS), said, “We don’t have any place to complain about cyber crime. So, people can’t complain about it and most of these crimes remain unreported.”
Some viruses, which, once installed on a computer, send back to the hacker, a detailed log of everything entered using the keyboard, including online banking details and passwords.
Belayet Hossain, a cyber café owner, said that few months back, he got an e-mail stating that he had won the Diversity Visa lottery. He shared the mail with one of his friends, who happens to be an IT expert. His friend, however, told him that the mail was a fraudulent one.
Though Belayet had a friend to check the veracity of the phishing mail, many people fall victims to this kind of cyber crime.
Though the computer is becoming a common household item and the number of internet users has already crossed six millions, very few computer-related offences are reported to the police. Moreover, police in the country do not give much priority to cyber offence.
There is a cyber crime unit in the CID. Some officers were given special training to combat such crime. But, for the want of necessary logistical supports, the unit remains dysfunctional.
Although the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) maintains a cyber crime team, it deals only with cell phone-related offences.
On cyber crime, Nasir Uddin Khan, senior official of the Detective Branch (DB), said, “Such crimes are non-cognizable in nature. So no one can file a case with the police. However, we’ve started working on mobile phone-related crimes.”
Terrorist organizations are also developing internet specialization, to deceive the law.
On September 5, 2008, the RAB website was hacked by one Bangladeshi hacker. After getting caught, Shahi Mirza, the hacker, claimed that he had hacked many domestic and international websites, including that of the Bangladesh Army.
But the police are yet to have a strong database, to hound out information about criminals. Experts, however, maintained that making a database server, connecting 600 police stations across the country, would not cost much.
However, the law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister, barrister Shafique Ahmed, said necessary action has not been taken against cyber crime, due to lack of proper knowledge of the people concerned in the judiciary.
But, the government is planning to provide proper training and form a tribunal to control cyber crime, as the nature of such crimes are changing in line with the changes in information and technology, he added.
-With The Independent input
