Election Commission Data Center (NID) has been accused of creating mirror copies of 46 types of personal information of more than 11 crore citizens and handing it over to domestic and foreign and public and private organizations. One person has been arrested in the theft. He is former director of data center Tarek M Barkatullah.
He was arrested by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DB) from North Kazipara of Kafrul in the capital on Wednesday around 7:30 am.
Meanwhile, a person named Enamul Haque filed a case against former prime minister’s communications and information technology adviser Sajib Wazed Joy and former state minister for information technology Junaid Ahmed Palak on Tuesday night at Kafrul police station for selling information of NID.
DMP Deputy Commissioner (Media) Muhammad Talebur Rahman addressed a press conference about this at DMP’s media center on Wednesday afternoon. On September 4, a news headline titled ‘Citizen’s Personal Data Sale with State Support’ was published. After this, the administration was shaken.
Talebur Rahman said that on October 4, 2022, an agreement was reached between the Bangladesh Election Commission and the Bangladesh Computer Council under the Ministry of ICT regarding the acceptance of NID verification services. According to that agreement, the Bangladesh Computer Council cannot sell or transfer the data of the Election Commission to any other person or organization. According to the contract, mirror copies of personal data of over 11 crore citizens were provided to the Bangladesh Computer Council in April 2019. But in violation of the terms of the agreement, the Bangladesh Computer Council provided the mirror copy of the citizen’s personal information to a private company called Digicon Global Service Limited in September 2019 for commercial use. Digicon Global Service Limited company has been selling the personal information of citizens through a website called ‘Identity’ to more than 180 domestic and foreign, government and private organizations for money since September 2019. He said that the data center containing the personal information of more than 11 crore citizens stored in the National Identity Registration Division Election Commission Secretariat has been recognized by the notification as an important information infrastructure. The gang illegally accesses critical information infrastructure, collects and transfers copies of databases, and commits digital and electronic fraud.
Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Kafrul Police Station Golam Mostafa said that the names of 19 people including Joy, Palak have been mentioned in the case. Besides, another 15 to 20 unidentified persons have been charged.
On September 4, the news was published under the title ‘Citizen’s personal information sold with state support’. According to the report, the private information of at least 5 crore citizens has been sold from the NID database. This information is being sold by the private company ‘Prichoy’. Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) has taken the dedicated connection API (Application Programming Interface) of Election Commission database in the name of providing ‘Government e-Service’. The identity platform has been selling national identity card information using that connection in violation of laws and regulations.
The report also said that the EC does not have accurate statistics on how many citizens’ personal information has been verified and sold since its inception using the Election Commission’s API provided to the BCC. As can be seen, EC has provided 4 crore 96 lakh 97 thousand 168 data from October 4, 2022 to last June 30. Before this, EC does not have the account of the number of data provided from the database from July 17, 2019 to October 3, 2022 in three years and two and a half months.
