Surveillance in Bangladesh - Legal challenge to surveillance laws withdrawn unexpectedly

This is the fifth in the series of articles on surveillance in Bangladesh.

The other articles published by New Age can be found here:

- Phone operators pay for government's surveillance 

- Telecom operators retain 6 months of SMS

- RAB seeking purchase of mobile phone spy tool

- Govt spent Tk 8.2 crore software to spy on  computers

To read articles on 'Bangladesh Political crisis, 2015' go here

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Legal challenge to surveillance laws withdrawn unexpectedly

David Bergman

A High Court public interest writ challenging the constitutionality of legal provisions which introduced widespread phone surveillance in the country was unexpectedly withdrawn a year after the court had issued an order asking the government to set out why the provisions should not be set aside.

The order, passed in May 2006 by Justice Md Awlas Ali and Justice Zinat Ara asked the government why the law ‘should not be declared to be ultra vires, void and without legal authority and … of no legal effect.’

However, four months after a state of emergency was declared, and before the government responded to the court order, the petition was withdrawn without any reason given.

Md Assaduzzaman, the lawyer for the petitioners told New Age that, ‘I went to court in April 2007 to withdrawal the writ petition after receiving instructions from my client not to continue with the case.’

Surveillance in Bangladesh - Telecom operators retain 6 months of SMS, other info, for law enforcers

This is the third in the series of articles published in New Age about surveillance. This was originally published on 16 February 2015. 

You can access all five of the articles from this page
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Telecom operators retain 6 months of SMS, other info, for law enforcers 

David Bergman 

Bangladesh’s six mobile phone operators are required to keep copies of all SMS messages sent by their subscribers for at least six months so they can be easily accessed by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, New Age has learnt.
In addition, the operators keep all ‘Call Related Information’, which includes details of all calls to and from a mobile phone, including the geo-location of the phone when the conversation took place.
‘We are required to keep this information according to the terms of our operating licence … At present we are required to keep SMS’s for six months,’ Nurul Kabir, the secretary general and chief executive officer of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh told New Age.
‘After six months the information becomes difficult to retrieve. The operators have it in backup servers, and can pull it off, but it can be difficult,’ he said.

Surveillance in Bangladesh - Phone operators pay for govt’s surveillance system upgrade

This is the third in the series of articles published in New Age about surveillance. This was originally published on 15 February 2015. 

You can access all five of the articles from this page
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Phone operators pay for govt’s surveillance system upgrade 

David Bergman

The country’s six mobile phone companies have paid for a multi-million dollar ‘upgrade’ to the government’s mobile phone surveillance system which allows intelligence and law enforcement authorities to directly record thousands of ongoing mobile phone conversations, New Age has learnt.
The upgrade, which will also allow greater access to mobile phone messages sent through e-mails and social networking sites, is being provided by the German company, Trovicor, one of the world’s leading suppliers of high end surveillance equipment and monitoring centres.
New Age has been told that the phone operators between them paid 20.1 million euros (Tk18.5 crore) for the upgrade – with the larger phone operators companies paying a larger share than the smaller ones.
Nurul Kabir, the secretary general and chief executive officer of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh told New Age that the mobile phone operators had to pay for the surveillance system as it was ‘part of their license conditions’.

Surveillance in Bangladesh - RAB seeking purchase of mobile phone spy tool

This is the second in the series of reports published in New Age about surveillance in Bangladesh. This was originally published on 2 November 2014

You can access all five of the articles from this page
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RAB seeking to purchase powerful mobile phone spy tool 

David Bergman

The Rapid Action Battalion is seeking to purchase a powerful mobile spy tool which can obtain details of all mobile phone numbers operating in a particular locality, according to a UK based privacy right organisation, Privacy International, which has published a copy of the procurement document on its website.
Known as an ‘IMSI catcher’, the equipment masquerades as a mobile phone base station and logs the telephone numbers of all the mobile phones in a particular area.
‘[IMSI] Catchers allow [law enforcement authorities] to indiscriminately gather data from thousands of mobile phones in a specific area and at public events such as political demonstrations,’ the Privacy International website states.
IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Information.
The international non-governmental organisation is lobbying the Swiss government authorities to prevent a company, NeoSoft, from exporting the surveillance equipment to Bangladesh so that, ‘RAB’s capacity to engage in indiscriminate violence’ is not ‘augmented with indiscriminate surveillance technology.’
‘Such a technology in the hands of an agency as reportedly unaccountable as the RAB is extremely concerning,’ it said.

Surveillance in Bangladesh - Govt purchased Tk 8.2cr software to spy on private computers

This is the first in the series of articles published in New Age about surveillance. This was originally published on 1 November 2014.

You can access all five of the articles from this page

Govt purchased Tk 8.2cr software to spy on private computers 

David Bergman 

The government has purchased surveillance software from a private European company which allows the country’s intelligence and law enforcement bodies to remotely intercept audio, video and written communications from privately owned computers, Wikileaks has revealed.
According to confidential records and information, leaked from the company and published last month on the Wikileaks website, the Bangladesh government has since December 2012 paid €831,060 (Tk 8.2 crore) to the German company FinFisher to purchase this ‘surveillance malware’.
The website does not state which particular Bangladesh law enforcement body or intelligence agency purchased the licenses, but the company only sells this software to government agencies.
According to the records, the main software license purchased by the Bangladesh authorities is called ‘FinSpy’.