“Democracy gives rights to people, information technology empowers them,” Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, MP, told a gathering here.
“It makes life easy, fast and transparent but like everything else in this world, it, too, is not an unmixed blessing”, the minister cautioned.
“As militancy and fundamentalism try to exploit the free space provided by democracy so do cyber criminals try to rein in the power of the Internet”, he said.
Inu felt that it was that an international law was framed to protect cyber space from abuse by subversives. “We, all, should be interested in framing such a law”, he said.
The minister emphasized the vital role of journalists in materializing it.
The information minister said this on Wednesday while addressing an award-giving ceremony at the Press Institute of Bangladesh (PIB).
Later he gave away the awards to the best IT journalists of the year, which was introduced this year.
The program was organized by PIB and the Access to Information (A2I) project of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
The awards went to Rafiqul Islam of Bangla News, Emdadul Haq Tuhin of the Daily Janakantha, Paban Rahman of SATV, Md Shajahan Ali of Daily Satmatha (Bogra), Mahfuzul Islam of Bangladesh Betar and Shahnaj Sharmin of ABC Radio.
The minister gave away the crests, while information secretary Mortuza Ahmed gave the cheques.
