Two police officers have been accused of selling highly sensitive and classified information of Bangladeshi citizens online. They took possession of this information by accessing the National Telecommunication Monitoring Center (NTMC) database.
The two police officers are Superintendent of Police Farhana Yasmin of Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU) and Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Tarek Aman Banna of Rapid Action Battalion-6 (RAB).
NTMC has also written to the Ministry of Home Affairs to take action against those involved. NTMC Director General (DG) Major General Ziaul Ahsan confirmed to the media that the letter was given on April 28.
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Although the letter was given about a month and a half ago, the matter came to light recently. The issue is clear from the interview given by Brigadier General Mohammad Baqer, director of NTMC, to TechCrunch, an international technology media.
According to NTMCA sources, the National Intelligent Platform (NIP) was accessed from the IDs of Superintendent of Police Farhana Yasmin and ASP Tarek Aman. From there, highly sensitive and classified confidential information of citizens is taken, including national identity cards, mobile phone information used, call records, criminal profiles and other types of information.
When the matter came to the notice of NTMC, the director of the organization Brigadier General Mohammad Baker sent a letter to the senior secretary of the public security department of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
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Brigadier General Baker said in an interview given to TechCrunch, an international technology media, that the information collected on multiple Telegram channels, Facebook groups and WhatsApp, including the Telegram channel called ‘BD Cyber Gang’, has been sold. Police officers used to provide information to admins of these groups. The internet sales were handled by those admins.
However, General Bucker could not confirm the exact number of citizens’ information that was sold online in this way.
Meanwhile, in the letter given to the Ministry of Home Affairs, it is mentioned that between March 25 and April 25, several information was collected by SP Farhana and ASP Tarek. NTMC came to know about the ‘data breach’ between 9 pm and 9:30 pm on 25 April. NTMC found unusual logins from Farhana and Tarek’s IDs after analyzing the server logs.
While investigating the matter, NTMC found evidence of information sale. In view of this, besides taking action against the accused police officers, NTMC has stopped the access of police ATU and RAB-6 to NIP.
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On the other hand, SP Farhana Yasmin and ASP Tarek Aman have been informed about the investigation against them, NTMC Director Brigadier General Barek told TechCrunch.
However, in a counter letter to NTMC, police ATU claimed that the two constables collected and sold the information using SP Farhana Yasmin’s ID. They are — Constable Mrityunjoy Chowdhury of Cyber Crime Wing and Khairul Islam of Operations Wing. Two constables have been dismissed.
AAH/MKR
