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Bangladesh to Announce Ordinance on Phone Tapping - Daily

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 12:00 CST

Text of report by Zahedul Islam entitled: "Ordinance on phone tapping likely next week", published by Bangladeshi newspaper New Age on 7 December

The [Bangladesh] government is likely to promulgate an ordinance by next week allowing the intelligence and law-enforcement officials to tap the telephone conversions of any individual, which is currently an offence under the Bangladesh Telecommunications Act 2001.

'The cabinet on Monday 5 December decided to promulgate the ordinance, as parliament is not in session now," said a highly placed source in the Prime Minister's Office.

The regular cabinet meeting with the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, in the chair on Monday, considering the recent spate of bombings and threats across the country by Islamist militants, approved the bill seeking an amendment to the act to allow phone-tapping by intelligence and law-enforcement officials.

"With the availability of mobile phones, the criminals are widely using it to conduct criminal activities, posing a threat to the national security and law and order in the country," an official at the Post and Telecommunications Ministry, which proposed the amendment, said.

The cabinet, however, decided that the legal immunity to tap telephone calls would be applied for a certain period while the chief executive of the relevant ministry (in this case the minister) would have the authority to give the order to tap the phone call of any person.

According to section 71(b) of the telecommunications act, phone- tapping is an offence and punishable with imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding 50,000 taka [758 US dollars] or both. The intelligence and law-enforcement agency officials are also under the purview of the act.

'The ordinance allowing phone-tapping by intelligence and law- enforcement officials will enable the government to produce evidence in court to punish the criminals, which currently is not possible," said a home ministry official.

The proposed amendment also includes a new section in the act, 97 (a), which says that the telecommunications service providers must cooperate with the intelligence and law-enforcement officials who are assigned to tap or record the data or telephone conversations in the interests of national security, improvement of law and order and curbing criminal activities.

The proposed amendment also says that the service providers will allow the relevant officials to use their infrastructure free of cost to do the job.

It also includes deletion of a provision to give compensation to the telecommunications service providers in the case their service being suspended by any government order.

Section 97(2) of the existing act says that if the president declares an emergency, the government may suspend or amend any licence or certificate or permit issued under this act, or suspend any particular activity of, or a particular service provided by, an operator, but the government shall pay compensation for the suspended service or installation.

The proposed amendment said that if the president declares an emergency or if the government feels that state security or law and order are in jeopardy, it can suspend or amend any licence or certificate or permit issued under this act, or suspend any particular activity of, or a particular service provided by, an operator and it will not pay any compensation for this.

The telecom ministry proposed the amendment as it was not clear in the act whether the government could stop the operation of a mobile phone service if there is no declaration of state of emergency, a ministry official said.

Source: BBC Monitoring South Asia

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