Call to use ICT for public interest

BSS, Dhaka :
Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu has dubbed ICT as a weapon of mass liberation and underscored the need for using it for public interest.
“Like all technologies, unless it is used in the public interest, it can become a very powerful instrument for political control, creating monopolies as well as social and economic inequalities,” Inu said adding, ‘this is what we have to guard against. Everybody now, therefore, is pondering how to master and why to apply ICT.”
The Minister was addressing the inaugural ceremony of Global Multi stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance-NET Mundial chaired by Brazilian President Dilma Vana Rousseff in presence of 1200 representatives from 90 countries including USA, Russia, UK, India and Japan, in Sao Paolo in Brazil on Thursday. Inu in his welcome remarks said the world has not yet found a plausible answer to the question who would guard the guardians and how to take care of hatred from power. At the same time, it is the world of three Cs: Correct, Collaborate and Compete, he stated.
However, Inu said, Internet is a shared resource and a global common available to public that provides voice to the voiceless. But access to Internet is much more expensive for the countries of global south, he observed.
“That’s why reduction cost and keeping the net neutrality is needed,” he said adding that the delicate problem of protecting secrecy, privacy, security of individuals and nation states are now necessary to address.