The High Court writ petition challenging the legality of the DMP’s drive to collect personal information about tenants from landlords in Dhaka raises several important questions.
Of most importance is the way this sudden police move violates the constitutional right of all citizens to privacy.
Examples abound of past occasions when citizens’ personal information has been leaked by government bodies, or used to harass innocent individuals.
Some police officials themselves have acknowledged there have been lots of allegations of corrupt officers using confidential information in attempts to extort money from the public.
The lack of any effective data protection rules and redress mechanisms to safely store personal information and prevent it being misused, is reason enough for the police move to be stayed.
As well as undermining public trust, the police move hugely increases the scope for conflict and distrust between tenants and landlords.
Moreover, much of the personal data being sought for the proposed database, such as private numbers of staff employed by tenants, is highly intrusive and unnecessary.
There is no practical merit or security justification for the police to compile such personal information about ordinary law abiding citizens.
This is not to say that there is never any security case for technological surveillance. Installing more CCTV cameras to track traffic offenses, for instance, may make sense in principle, even if the track record of authorities in making good use of such equipment is poor in practice.
However, the police are overreaching their authority by wanting to store personal information about tenants. It is a pointless exercise which will waste public money without adding anything to the police’s ability to obtain information from citizens during the course of actual investigations.
The court should stand up for privacy and ask the police to think more carefully how they use their powers.