MPs warned over hacking, voice cloning

Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni on Thursday urged lawmakers to use facial-recognition devices when entering and leaving parliament, warning that growing incidents of phone hacking, voice cloning and document forgery were putting MPs at risk.

He made the call during the third session of the 13th Parliament on the final day of the session. “Facial recognition is carried out in all our lobbies. I would request all honourable members of parliament to have their faces scanned before entering the House,” he said.

As the session concluded, Moni also asked lawmakers to undergo facial recognition when leaving the parliament building.

He warned that several MPs had recently been impersonated through their phone numbers, with fraudsters allegedly sending messages requesting urgent money transfers.

“Three of our honourable members said that requests had been made to send Tk500 urgently, Tk30,000 and Tk25,000. These urgent requests came from three different phone numbers,” he said.

According to Moni, attempts were made to contact the MPs whose numbers had allegedly been used to send the messages, but they could not be reached.

“That means the phones have been hacked,” he said.
The chief whip further warned that fraudsters were increasingly using voice cloning and forged documents to deceive people.

He said lawmakers were also being targeted through forged signatures and fraudulent documents.
“By tampering with a signature, they are producing a document and presenting it as genuine.

That has also become a problem. Many opposition members have faced this, and many members of the ruling party have faced it too,” he said.

Moni urged all MPs to remain vigilant and verify suspicious requests before taking any action.
Deputy Speaker Kayser Kamal later asked whether any preventive measures were being taken at the state level to curb such incidents.

Moni said he had discussed the matter with relevant authorities the previous day and that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) was working on preventive measures.