The drafted Information and Communication Technology (Amendment) Ordinance 2013 is likely to be challenged in court by a few NGOs and international agencies as they think the law contradicts people’s human rights.
Officials in the ICT industry and legal experts have said there is a huge chance that the law could be misused in the name of preventing cybercrimes. Many have termed it a “black law.”
“There is no doubt that this is a black law…Not just ICT people, every citizen should join hands to protect their rights by preventing execution of the law,” Dr Ananya Raihan, executive director of Dnet, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Raihan is also a member of the high-profile Digital Taskforce, the highest government body in the ICT sector headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Raihan said ICT experts were considering a legal challenge against the law.
“We are planning to challenge this amended act with the assistance of the TIB [Transparency International Bangladesh]. We will also talk to the BLAST [Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust] about the legal and human rights aspects of the challenge,” he said.
When contacted, ICT Secretary Nazrul Islam Khan, however, said: “We took the previous act as the pillar and proposed amendments to some sections of it. As nobody objected to the existing act there is no scope to challenge this amendment initiative.
“People can criticise us, but we did it as a responsibility for the society and the cabinet has approved it. There are lots of scopes to specify some crimes and we will change some sections of the amended act when it is placed in the parliamentary standing committee.”
Cybercrimes and other related activities would be closely identified then, the ICT secretary added.
The cabinet on Monday approved the draft of the amendment to the ICT Act 2006, which proposed empowering law enforcers to arrest any person without any warrant and increasing the highest punishment for violation of the law to 14 years.
Jurist Shahdin Malik also termed it a black law, saying: “The act can create confusions, which can cause problems to anyone. It also eases the way of sending anyone to jail.”
Barrister Nuruzzaman, a Supreme Court lawyer who also has expertise in ICT, said: “Even if the law was implemented with absolute honesty, there would be scopes for misuse. The police of our country are not a trained force, so there are chances that the law will be wrongly applied in different ways.”
Nuruzzaman invited the ICT ministry to take legal opinions on the act. “There is also a chance for playing with information. If there is anything in the law that goes against human rights, the law can be challenged.”
Experts claimed that the government would not be able to tackle cybercrimes with this kind of “inefficient act.” They said the previous government had made the law only to introduce the use of digital signature for documents. It inserted some provisions for cybercrimes in the act at that time.
“The law could be used on political purposes also. After last February we found out that the government was not able to tackle cybercrimes and perhaps that led it to go for amending the act,” said a leader of an ICT-based organisation.
Mustafa Jabbar, president of Bangladesh Computer Samity, said the law was inadequate to deal with cybercrimes.
“The government cannot handle cybercrimes with this act as technology changes overnight and many things often converge into one in the ICT world. The government can form a different act only to deal with cybercrimes,” Jabbar said.
“As this government declared itself as a ‘digital government,’ it has to realise the situation in light of the last four and a half years.”
In the original ICT Act 2006 enacted by the then BNP-led government, the maximum punishment for an offence was 10 years’ jail term and a fine of Tk10m. Police needed permission from the authorities concerned to file a case and arrest a person involved in crimes covered by the law.
The amendments envisage a minimum jail term of seven years and a maximum of 14.
In the original act, termed by many a repressive law, offences were eligible for bail. But now offences are non-bailable, meaning the bail is at the judge’s discretion.
Mustafa Jabbar said many cybercrimes were not brought under the purview of the original ICT act. “For instance, it does not address any crime committed through the use of mobile phones. The law considers emails as evidence, which conflicts with the country’s evidence act.
“The amendments do not address these issues.”
Jabbar considers the provision for arrest without warrant the “blackest” part of the law. “The law offers the scope for political misuse. There is no guarantee that police will not misuse it,” he told the Dhaka Tribune.
“Only bureaucrats can make this type of act. They did not talk to any expert before finalising it,” he said.
Fahim Mashroor, president of the IT trade body Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services, said: “The government should have consulted the relevant quarters before going for the amendments.”
There are a lot of scopes for misusing the law, which may hamper the ICT growth in the country, he told the Dhaka Tribune.
When the ICT secretary was informed of the experts’ concerns, he said: “We will sit with the experts very soon and we need to define many things before passing the law in parliament next session.”
