Staff Reporter :
For ten years, the Sheikh Hasina government funnelled $190 million into a shadow surveillance empire – importing Israeli and U.S. spyware to track political opponents, silence journalists, and monitor citizens in real time, a bombshell investigation by the Techglobal Institute has revealed.
At least 160 high-tech spying tools – from IMSI catchers and Wi-Fi interceptors to advanced spyware like Cellebrite, FinFisher, and Predator – were smuggled into Bangladesh through murky procurement deals and third-country intermediaries.
The arsenal has armed elite security agencies with the power to intercept calls, hack devices, monitor internet traffic, and crush dissent at the touch of a button.
The National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC) was the biggest spender, burning through more than $100 million –
58 per cent of the total – between 2018 and 2024. Its purchases included deep packet inspection (DPI) systems, decryption technology, and large-scale internet monitoring infrastructure.
Other powerful agencies – including the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Bangladesh Police, the National Security Intelligence (NSI), and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) – acquired mobile and Wi-Fi interceptors, signal jammers, and nationwide cell network tracking systems.
According to the report, these technologies were not used solely for counterterrorism or crime prevention, as officially claimed. Instead, they became tools for political control – deployed to monitor opposition leaders, journalists, human rights defenders, and ordinary citizens, particularly during elections and mass protests.
With the state now equipped to track dissent in real time, the line between national security and authoritarian control has all but disappeared.
