Bangladesh reportedly requiring ISPs to provide client, traffic information

According to E-Bangladesh, Bangladeshi authorities are now requiring ISPs to turn over various details about corporate clients as part of the the ongoing battle with unlicensed VoIP providers. The 3rd world view follows the story, including additional information about the specific information ISPs are required to retain (and thus turn over) about clients.

ONI's research into Internet filtering has highlighted the fact that filtering is often a "slippery slope" - even if censorship is initially limited to narrowly defined content, once an apparatus to carry out filtering is in place, it is easy to expand the use of that apparatus to contain the spread of other "harmful" content. Establishing a precedent of cooperation with authorities, and requiring ISPs to install and maintain tools to allow authorities to monitor all Internet traffic, does not guarantee that surveillance will be used more frequently in the future, but it makes such use far easier, and far less likely to be noticed, if surveillance use does increase. Even if surveillance is necessary to identify illegal VoIP providers, Bangladesh should narrowly constrain any such surveillance to minimize the risk of future abuse.