Bangladeshi police agents accused of promoting voters’ deepest recordsdata on Telegram | TechCrunch – Techcrunch
Two senior officers working for anti-alarm police in Bangladesh allegedly composed and sold classified and deepest recordsdata of voters to criminals on Telegram, TechCrunch has learned.
The solutions allegedly sold included national id particulars of voters, cell telephone call recordsdata and other “classified secret recordsdata,” consistent with a letter signed by a senior Bangladeshi intelligence legit, considered by TechCrunch.
The letter, dated April 28, changed into as soon as written by Brigadier Authorized Mohammad Baker, who serves as a director of Bangladesh’s National Telecommunications Monitoring Center, or NTMC, the country’s digital eavesdropping agency. Baker confirmed the legitimacy of the letter and its contents in an interview with TechCrunch.
“Departmental investigation is ongoing for every the cases,” Baker said in a web chat, adding that the Bangladeshi Ministry of Residence Affairs ordered the affected police organizations to rob “foremost action towards those officers.”
The letter, which changed into as soon as before all the issues written in Bengali and addressed to the senior secretary of the Ministry of Residence Affairs Public Security Division, alleges the two police agents accessed and passed “extraordinarily refined recordsdata” of non-public voters on Telegram in alternate for money.
In response to the letter, the police agents had been caught after investigators analyzed logs of the NTMC’s systems and how in most cases the two accessed it.
The letter shows the id of the officers. One of the most accused is a police superintendent serving with the Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU). The replacement is an assistant police superintendent deputy on the Like a flash Hotfoot Battalion, furthermore known as RAB 6, a controversial paramilitary unit that the U.S. authorities sanctioned in 2021 over allegations that the unit is linked to an total bunch of disappearances and extrajudicial killings. TechCrunch is now not naming the two folk that had been accused because it’s unclear within the occasion that they’ve been charged below the country’s precise system.
The NTMC is a authorities intelligence agency established below Bangladesh’s Ministry of Residence Affairs. The agency’s core job is to video show all telecommunications visitors and intercept telephone and web communications to detect and forestall threats to national security.
Organizations like Human Rights Behold and Freedom Residence have criticized the NTMC for missing safeguards towards abuses, every towards free speech as successfully as privacy. Over the years, NTMC procured subtle technology from firms in Israel, which Bangladesh doesn’t officially acknowledge, as successfully as other Western international locations, to habits mass surveillance largely on opposition celebration participants, journalists, civil society participants and activists.
As section of its mission, the NTMC runs the National Intelligence Platform, or NIP, an internal authorities web portal that holds classified citizen recordsdata, like national identification particulars, cell telephone registration and cell recordsdata recordsdata, criminal profiles and other recordsdata.
A quantity of legislation enforcement and intelligence agencies have person accounts on the NIP portal equipped by the NTMC.
NTMC’s possess investigation concluded that the agents dilapidated the NIP platform time beyond regulation and again than others, and accessed and composed recordsdata that changed into as soon as now not connected to them.
“Pondering the context, such inappropriate get admission to and unlawful handover of extraordinarily refined classified recordsdata wants to be investigated to identify all people eager on this and we furthermore question for acceptable action towards all those identified/eager,” the letter learn.
Baker advised TechCrunch that there were a “sequence of Telegram channels,” adding that regarded as one of them changed into as soon as known as BD CYBER GANG.
TechCrunch couldn’t identify the explicit channel on Telegram.
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Baker advised TechCrunch that it looks that the two agents sent the recordsdata to the administrator of on the least one Telegram community, who then tried to sell it.
Baker said that the two agents were notified of the investigation.
Due to this of of the investigation, all NIP users from ATU and RAB 6 have had their get admission to suspended “until the eager officers are identified, and honest action is taken,” consistent with the letter.
Baker confirmed the suspended get admission to, announcing that if agents “need any recordsdata for investigation capabilities they are able to comprise thru Police and RAB HQ.”
Spokespeople for Bangladesh’s Ministry of Residence Affairs and ATU didn’t reply to extra than one requests for comment. A person identifying most efficient as an “operations officer” at RAB 6 advised TechCrunch that the agency had no comment.
Final year, a security researcher found that the NTMC changed into as soon as leaking folk’s deepest recordsdata on an unsecured server. The leaked recordsdata included staunch-world names, telephone numbers, e mail addresses, areas and exam results, consistent with Wired. One more Bangladeshi authorities agency, the Place of work of the Registrar Authorized, Beginning & Death Registration, furthermore leaked voters’ refined recordsdata final year, as TechCrunch reported on the time.
In every cases, the leaks had been found by Viktor Markopoulos, a researcher who works at Bitcrack Cyber Security.
Whereas those had been foremost cases of recordsdata publicity, this incident allegedly inspiring the ATU and RAB 6 agents is doubtlessly extra unfavorable, equipped that the agents allegedly sold recordsdata online in an try to earnings from their privileged get admission to to classified deepest recordsdata.
Though the incident is below investigation, a successfully-positioned supply right thru the authorities advised TechCrunch that there are mild officers who are offering to sell voters’ recordsdata.
