Government control is coming to Facebook YouTube from September

The Dhaka Times Desk There is no need to pay dharna to foreign authorities in the case of removing any content that is against the country's sovereignty and social fundamentals from websites like Facebook, YouTube or Google. Bangladesh is going to acquire its own capacity in this regard.

It is hoped that this capability will be achieved and implemented by next September. In this system, no one in Bangladesh can see any offensive comments, posts or videos of Facebook or YouTube even if they are seen outside the country.

According to a news published in the media, the work of acquiring this capability is being carried out in a project called 'Cyber Threat Detection and Response' at a cost of 159 crores. About 22,000 porn and 2,500 gambling sites have already been shut down as a result of the project. Moreover, the process of shutting down the porn and gabbling sites identified through round-the-clock monitoring is also underway. The project is being implemented by the Directorate of Telecommunications located in Tejgaon industrial area of the capital.

This state-of-the-art monitoring and control center has been set up there. 29 International Internet Gateways (IIG) and 3 National Internet Exchanges (NIX) of the country have also been added. After implementation of the project, the government regulatory body BTRC will be responsible for managing it. National Telecom Monitoring Center NTMCO can also use it.

It is known that earlier to close a site, it was only done by sending the address of that site to the IIG operators. However, IIG operators do not know which sites are being closed now. If a site is closed, measures are also being taken to control access to it in alternative ways through this organization.

An official related to this matter said, 'Tom and Jerry' game is going on and on with the website being shut down and trying to start it in an alternative way. But in this case, if it takes a day to make an alternative route, it will take only 10 minutes to close it.

Post and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar told the news media about this discussed project, 'In the last 17 months, I have noticed that Facebook and Google were not even willing to talk to us. After we went to hard line, now they want to listen, even sit in discussion. After all, they have promised that they will also give importance to the laws of Bangladesh. But the crisis we're seeing is, because they're an American company, the word they bother us with the most is community standards.

Their community standards and our community standards are not the same. Because of that, even if Donald Trump's 14th birthday is rescued and insulted, it is fedom of speech in their community standards. But what we have here mostly in the name of this fidem of speech is promoting communalism, militancy and creating terror.

Because of this, when we send requests to take action on an issue, they only respond if it is in line with their community standards. All in all, we feel that depending on them, it is difficult to maintain a safe internet in our country. That is why we have taken up this project. The main purpose of implementing this is that at least we can stay safe in our own area. We have achieved partial success in the implementation of the project so far. Websites can now be controlled. It is also in progress to specifically address comments, statuses and video levels.

Minister Mustafa Jabbar also said, 'Our objective is to build our capacity in this regard. That will happen. But even after we have achieved technical capability at some stage, new technology may come. Then we have to create the ability to control that technology.'

The project officials have confirmed that the project is expected to be fully implemented within the month of September.