“Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) asked the mobile phone operators to record all conversations as well as to archive all text and multimedia messages and to make them available to the government whenever it wants.
Muhammad Omar Farooq, BTRC’s chairman, sent a confidential letter to the operators on Thursday ordering them to install “lawful interception” system without outlining the details. He also asked the operators to “maintain call related information and have provision for maintaining call content, so that on the request of the requiring bodies, this can be made available to them forthwith.”
Sources said BTRC had a series of meetings with the operators on the eavesdropping issue and the operators always agreed to link their respective networks with the government’s recording facilities. In those meetings the regulator said the government will record the calls and messages but now it is asking the operators to do that job.
“How can we install ‘lawful interception’ system when it is unlawful at the first place?” commented a mobile operator’s high official requesting anonymity. He dubbed the directive as “grossly inconsistent” because recording the conversation of any customer or preserving clients’ messages is totally illegal for any operator and the telecoms law as well as the license strictly mandates them to maintain customers’ privacy.”
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