More from the bizarro world

By Habibul Islam

This commentary, obviously, follows from the one on the wacky desires of law enforcement that was posted on this site a few days back. It’s also a consequence of the seeming compulsion this blogger believes the junior minister for telecommunication—along with her powerful law enforcement officials—feels, namely, the Bangladesh administration must have some control on the social media platforms especially Facebook, for whatever reasons which, though, must be seductive enough for them to unrelentingly pursue just as a Scottish king is said to have learnt about perseverance from a spider.

The ostensible cause, it appears, is the “dreadful influence” that is being wielded via Facebook (FB) which in turn is heinously impacting on many people who in their turn are resorting to even more heinous actions. The professed obsession with Facebook—which doubtlessly will warm the cockles of M. Zuckerberg’s heart, and little wonder given that he and wife P. Chan feel they can afford to raise another child—of the junior minister and others in the Bangladesh administration would indicate that once the government can successfully bring Facebook under some degree of restraint this country would be free of all the various types of crimes, militancy, terrorism, et al.

But in this pursuit of exerting pressure on Internet outlets it clearly looks like we’ve been ignoring and overlooking more relevant realities. For instance to stem the tide of crimes the crime fighting machinery must function with some essential degree of efficiency, dedication, sophistication and fairness, among other factors, and just as importantly scrutinize the causes that are leading to those criminal incidents. In this context let us also look at another fact: In this nation’s avowed pledge to transform this country into a “digital” one we’ve evidently taken our eyes off the road.

As a consequence, according to a report of the Alliance for Affordable Internet, Bangladesh has gone down thirteen rungs in the Internet affordability drivers’ index among fifty-eight developing and least developed countries. This was caused, per the Alliance, due to the country’s slow progress in this sphere compared to the other nations. In the previous year Bangladesh occupied the 33rd place with a score of 39.13 while in the following year it slid to 46 with a score of 39.41 out of one hundred.

Against this backdrop lately there’s been much more talk of how the country’s authorities can oversee, control, and for all practical purposes administer Facebook for Bangladesh with the acquiescence of Facebook officials. Hence this fascinating report from a few days back: “Facebook has turned down a proposal to sign a memorandum of understanding on requiring national identity card or passport numbers/copies for Bangladeshis to open accounts on the social media website, Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque said.” He also asserted that he told an FB manager, “[T]here must be some restrictions for opening a Facebook account.” Simply extraordinary, even if incredible.

A portion of the backdrop is also the fact that FB usually removes offensive materials if and when any government makes such a request (which, naturally, has to be grounded in reason). It also complies with other kinds of requests including deleting an account altogether if conditions so warrant. Bangladesh’s wish also elicited this reaction from Bangladeshi IT expert Sumon A. Sabir, as per a report, “I doubt if any other country had ever done this [made a similar request]….We were negatively portrayed when we blocked Facebook and some other social media sites in 2015.” Sabir also underscored that Facebook has a privacy agreement with its users and therefore it cannot breach at will. The last part evidently will ask for sophisticated thinking to comprehend.

Earlier news stories and administration pronouncements point to a remarkable reality, i.e. myriad government officials have been obsessing on FB for some time now and, as has been noted above, have exhibited extreme determination in their devoted efforts to get through to the FB management with different arguments. If FB wanted to accept all the expressed desires of the Bangladesh authorities, in all likelihood, they’d have to float a separate Facebook exclusively for the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Wow. Wouldn’t that be something to crow about! Sophisticated thinking not required here.

What, apparently, government leaders have been missing are the proverbial woods for the metaphorical trees. While various categories of crimes have moved northward, while intelligence on “militants” and/or “terrorists” have been moseying way behind their seeming activities, while the streets of Bangladesh have become deadly beyond belief as hundreds of lives are being lost merely because truck and bus operators are neither qualified to be behind the steering wheel and nor do they have to fear the wrath of the law—the roster could get pretty boring if this commenter wanted to go on—administration luminaries have all too evidently been zeroing in on the superficial instead of investigating the causes.

We’re talking of actions and what pass for thoughts in a milieu in which rationally managing vehicular traffic is incontrovertibly beyond available capability, in which murders remain unsolved mainly due to muddled circumstances, in which abductions by personnel associated with the law enforcement apparatus are often denied with the blandest of countenances, in which persons normally prone to fumbling with the TV remote control have automatic arms at their disposal—plainly this roster too could be monotonously long. The truth however is, it’ll be immensely more constructive and productive to unbolt paths to inform, educate, elucidate and provide modern training to people needing them rather than shielding them from authenticity as if they’re retards.