THE government agencies will soon start monitoring social media sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, round-the-clock to check any smear campaign ahead of the December 30 Parliamentary Election. The Election Commission made the decision during a meeting with Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and Mobile operators.
The EC Secretary said the move was aimed at checking smear campaigns that can foil the election. Asked, he said they could not shut down Facebook and Twitter but could check them. Meeting sources said an EC official, during the meeting, informed the others that they have noticed the spread of propaganda on social media platforms ahead of the polls. The official then said necessary actions were needed to stop the misuse of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Later, the decision to monitor the sites was taken.
In a letter on November 15, the BTRC had asked all mobile operators, internet service providers, International Internet Gateway, Broadband Wireless Access, National Telecom Transmission Network, Public Switched Telephone Network and National Internet Exchange, to help set up equipment of the NTMC. The BTRC had also asked the operators to assist NTMC as the latter was setting up equipment for the “sake of security of state and public safety”.
This surveillance of social media sites is Orwellian in nature–the only close parallel is in China where the government constantly monitors every single site for subversive activities. Democratic countries like the US which have seen large scale meddling in their previous Presidential Election-2016 still rely on the sites themselves to apply self-censorship. Facebook, for example, routinely self censors sites which are thought to hold objectionable content in the aftermath of the US Presidential Election debacle, a move to combat the influence of overseas governments like Russia in any current or future US Presidential election.
But do we really have to be worried that any neighbouring country will influence our elections through abusing digital platforms? Far more worrisome is that certain parties will use the sites to harbour violent propaganda or spread misinformation but this could potentially apply to any political party.
While surveillance potentially has the ability to stop people from doing any mischief, it smacks of the beginning of an intrusive state – a state which has no problems looking into people’s digital backyards. For better or worse we have arrived at a new age.
