Data Privacy and Data Diplomacy in Bangladesh
Tawhidur Rahman

Introduction:
In this age of globalized connectedness, we are constantly
in need to connect through sharing our personal data. Everyday
terabytes of personal data are used through diff erent technologies
to access and operate various technological devices. It has
become a matter of concern how these data are being stored,
accessed and used. The need for a modern data protection law,
considering the growth of ecommerce, cloud computing, social
networks and online games has become pivotal across the
globe. As such, more and more nations are enacting Personal
Data Protection laws such as GDPR in Europe.

Data Privacy and Bangladesh
The 21st century has been defi ned by many as the age
of information. In today’s digital information environment,
personal data plays the most important role. With personal
data, companies and entrepreneurs can target their customers
easily and market their products accordingly. The modern
era of information and technology has turned our personal
data into a valuable commodity. And most often than not
businesses around the world are infringing our privacy by
accessing our personal information illegally without any
informed authorization.

The main reason behind this is the lack of legal protection
for our personal data. The evaluation of the legal regime
protecting our privacy has failed to keep up with the everchanging
technologies. As a result, a lot of confusion has
arisen over the past few years and many opportunists took
advantage of this confusion by stealing and selling our
personal data without informing us about our identity theft.

Digital Security Laws
Until recently there was no legal protection available in
Bangladesh for any infringement of personal data. Bangladesh
recently passed the Digital Security Act 2020 (the ‘Act’),
which was enacted to ensure National Digital Security and
enact laws regarding Digital Crime Identifi cation, Prevention,
Suppression, Trial and other related matters. This Act also
contains provision protection of Identity Information. For the
purpose of this Act Identity Information has been defi ned as
“any external, biological or physical information or any other
information which singly or jointly can identify a person or a
system, his/her name, address, Date of birth, mother’s name
, father’s name, signature, National identity , birth and death
registration number, fi ngerprint, passport number , bank
account number , driver’s license , E-TIN number, Electronic
or digital signature , username, Credit or debit card number,
voice print , retina image , iris image , DNA profi le, Securityrelated
questions or any other identifi cation which due to the
excellence of technology is easily available.”

Section 26 of the Act defi nes crimes relating to collecting
and using identity information. Under section 26(1) any
unauthorized use i.e. collection, selling, taking possession,
supplying or using anyone’s identity information has been
defi ned as an off ense. Under the Act for any crime relating to
identity information, imprisonment for a term not exceeding
5 (fi ve) years or fi ne not exceeding 5 (fi ve) lacs taka or with
both has been prescribed and for repeating the punishment
can be increased 7 (seven) years of imprisonment or with fi ne
not exceeding 10 (ten) lacs taka or with both.

State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak on Friday
said a draft of data privacy and localization law has been
prepared under the direction from his cabinet colleague and
relevant government personality. The draft will be presented
in the Jatiya Sangsad after taking opinion from diff erent
platforms and media shortly, he said.
What should be data pricy law?
Consent

Data subjects must be allowed to give explicit,
unambiguous consent before the collection of personal data.
Personal data includes information collected through the
use of cookies. Some information not usually considered
“personal information” such as the user’s computer IP
address, is considered to be “personal data” according to the
GDPR.

Data Breach Notifi cation
Organizations are required to notify supervisory
authorities and data subjects within 72 hours in the event of
a data breach aff ecting users’ personal information in most
cases.
Data Privacy and Data
Diplomacy in Bangladesh
Tawhidur Rahman
ENGLISH SECTION

21 COMPUTER JAGAT DECEMBER 2020
PCSS EnCE CCISO ACE,CFIP SCCISP,CCTA
Data Subjects’ Rights
Data subjects (people whose data is collected and
processed) have certain rights regarding their personal
information. These rights should be communicated to data
subjects in a clear, easy to access privacy policy on the
organization’s website.

 The right to be informed. Data subjects must be
informed about the collection and use of their personal
data when the data is obtained.

 The right to access their data. A data subject can
request a copy of their personal data via a data subject
request. Data controllers must explain the means of
collection, what’s being processed, and with whom it
is shared.

 The right of rectifi cation. If a data subject’s data is
inaccurate or incomplete, they have the right to ask
you to rectify it.

 The right of erasure. Data subjects have the right to
request the erasure of personal data related to them on
certain grounds within 30 days.

 The right to restrict processing. Data subjects have the
right to request the restriction or suppression of their
personal data (though you can still store it).

 The right to data portability. Data subjects can have
their data transferred from one electronic system
to another at any time safely and securely without
disrupting its usability.

 The right to object. Data subjects can object to how
their information is used for marketing, sales, or nonservice-
related purposes. The right to object does not
apply where legal or offi cial authority is carried out,
a task is carried out for public interest, or when the
organization needs to process data to provide you with
a service for which you signed up.

What’s next with global privacy?

With work already underway to amend and expand the
remit of CCPA, we can expect the trend of new and more
comprehensive data protection laws being introduced to
continue. Other recent and upcoming developments in
international data protection regulation include:

1. Data breach notifi cation and data security legislation
recently passed in New York in October 2019

2. Data protection laws regarding privacy or security
approved in Maine, Nevada, Massachusetts, Ohio,
and Colorado in 2019

3. Draft data protection legislation proposed in
Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina,
Virginia, and Wisconsin during January 2020

4. Draft Data Transparency and Privacy Act brought to
Illinois Senate in January 2020

5. Amendments to Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy)
Ordinance proposed in January 2020

6. Draft bill amendments to Singapore’s Personal Data
Protection Act anticipated early 2020

7. The Australian Consumer Data Right eff ective 6
February 2020

8. Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act anticipated
to be eff ective from May 2020

9. Brazil’s General Data Protection Law expected to
take eff ect from August 2020

10. A revised proposal of the European E-Privacy
Regulation (initially proposed in January 2017)
anticipated during 2020

11. UK GDPR to be eff ective in the UK on 1 January
2021 following the end of the agreed Brexit transition
period

12. Draft Data Protection Act brought to Bangladesh
Ministry of ICT in October 2020
Digital diplomacy to Data diplomacy
The digital revolution arrived late at the heart of
ministries of foreign aff airs across the world. Ministries
latched on to social media around the time of Tahrir Square
and Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution, beguiled by a vision of
the technology engendering a networked evolution toward
more liberal societies. Foreign ministries scrambled to make
‘Twitter-Diplomacy’ part of their push-strategy in strategic
communication and began, though arguably too slowly, to
analyse US-based digital platform-generated data to inform
foreign policy decisions. ‘Tech for Good’ was the universal
assumption a decade ago.

Now, the advent of 5G systems and the capacity to
run larger volumes of data across them, to develop greater
applications for artifi cial intelligence
(AI) and the internet of things, will not
only have deeply disruptive impacts on
our societies and the way we work - from
manufacturing to services but it will
also present steep challenges to how our
bureaucracies manage big data and how -
in the case of ministries of foreign aff airs
- they harness capacities for anticipatory
foreign policy making.

Bangladesh Telecommunication
Regulatory Commission (BTRC) today
offi cially disclosed its primary decision
of making 5G internet service available
in the country by 2021. BTRC gave
licenses to the mobile operators with
a condition that they will have to bring
all the district headquarters under 5G
service by 2023 while the entire country
by 2026.
ENGLISH SECTION
22 COMPUTER JAGAT DECEMBER 2020
 India’s draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 introduced in December 2019
The Government has been proactively pursuing the digital
penetration of all government portals by the year 2023. The
country developed the National Portal in 2014, which now houses
over 45,000 websites and services of diff erent government
offi ces, with about 60 million hits a month on average.
Over 5,000 Digital Centres have been set up across the
country to cover the “last mile” and ensure the various digital
services reach all citizens, addressing the issue of the digital
divide. To ensure interoperability, the Bangladesh National
Digital Architecture was established.

Digital services like Smart NID, the biometric database
of unique IDs, fi ngerprints and iris scans has been successful
in making citizen services run more smoothly, and negating
problems like fake IDs and impersonation.
In covid-19 Bangladesh launch covid-19 web data portal
and also it launched covid-19 tracker which help a lot to
taking decision for diplomats.

To be sure, the advent of greater data capacities holds
promises - not just challenges - for diplomacy. Wellcultivated,
big data will radically improve the consular
process, bolster the preparation of diplomats for complex,
multi-level negotiations on trade and sanctions and boost
the ability to forecast humanitarian crises linked to climate
change eff ects from drought to fl ooding.

Big data aggregation could also help identify disinformation
campaigns targeted against a certain country more quickly and
accurately. Chat bots are already improving the more tedious
aspects of consular aff airs, supporting registration processes
or legal aid for refugees. Bangladesh ICT ministry are also
working for disinformation. The government is cracking
down on the spread of ‘disinformation’ about the government,
public representatives, army offi cials and members of the lawenforcing
agencies on social media from home and abroad.

Besides the “untrue, imaginary, misleading, and provocative”
statements on social media, the ministry also noticed “false
and baseless news to mislead the security forces”.

“These can create the possibility of disrupting peace in
the country, and concerns, anger and confusion among the
people,” the notice said.

The government has decided to act against the people
behind the “disinformation” campaign in order to keep law
and order, it said.

Much as geo-coding and social media mapping is already
helping Global Aff airs Canada and the UK Foreign and
Commonwealth Offi ce understand where their messages
resonate most eff ectively, in the near-term future a bigger
volume of data and increased interpretation capacities
might be used to locate citizens in need and to monitor
social media to predict possible consular crises. To realize
the advantages of these data streams, the data will have
to be harnessed and interpreted by trained analysts and
diplomats. Bangladesh can also working on geo-coding and
social media mapping for decreasing the disinformation.
New privacy law for Bangladesh Drafted :

“Personal information of an individual collected
for a particular purpose is commonly misused for other
purposes, like direct marketing without the consent of the
individual. Some internal confi dentiality standard within
the system is required so that personal information of an
individual does not get transferred to others easily causing
irreparable distress or embarrassment.”* So it have to
be clear in the new law that personal information of an
individual collected for a particular purpose should be used
for that particular purpose.

While Bangladesh is well protected by virtue of the
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act, 2006
to bring proceedings against perpetrators of such intrusion
and unauthorized access, what it fails to take into account is
that these perpetrators carry out their operations anonymously
and thus, in most cases, it is diffi cult to identify them. In
other words, a preventive framework at the pre-breach level
is simply non-existent. There are some protection ensured by
various Acts and Regulation on piecemeal nature, however
there is no comprehensive data protection for consumers and
general public for their non-electronic data provide to various
organizations, companies and corporations.

At last, we may conclude that Bangladesh is drafting
new data protection act of Bangladesh, 2020 where it make a
comprehensive statute regarding protection of personal data
with clear indication of defi nition personal data, purposes
for processing personal data, punishment for obtaining,
transferring or selling of personal data without lawful
authority etc. A mandatory provision in the new law included
as the personal data of any person collected for a particular
purpose shall not be processed without the consent of the
person concerned except any statutory legal excuse.
After coming in power in 2009, Honorable Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina set several targets for Bangladesh,
i.e. to achieve the status of a middle-income country by
2021, accomplishing the SDG goals by 2030, becoming a
developed country by 2041, becoming a miracle by 2071, and
executing a delta plan by 2100. Thus, one can argue that under
the visionary leadership of Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina, Bangladesh is moving forward with specifi c targets
in mind with new laws and policies for digital Bangladesh.
One of the major strengths for Bangladesh is that among
170 million people more than 60 per cent are energetic and
dynamic youths who can contribute immensely to the overall
development of the country. The world needs to know that
Bangladesh is no more an ‘international basket case’. And for
this success, Bangladesh and its people sincerely appreciate
the cooperation from the international community