Facebook delegation due on Dec 6: Tarana

State Minister for Telecom Tarana Halim today said the Facebook authority will visit Bangladesh on December 6 to discuss a proposal about signing a deal with the government to combat cybercrimes in the country.

“The Facebook Asian Regional authority will visit Bangladesh and hold meetings with us and different ministry officials concerned on December 6,” Tarana told The Daily Star.

“The visiting delegation may reach a deal with the government to combat crimes which are being committed by using the social networking site,” the state minister added.

The government yesterday wrote a letter to the Facebook authority showing interest to sign a deal with the social networking site in order to attain information about its users

“The deal with Facebook will help the government curb the numbers of cyber crimes in the country and violence against women will come down significantly,” said Tarana.

“As per our plan, I wrote to strike the deal with Facebook,” said the state minister.

The government has taken the initiative as the country became susceptible to cyber attacks, especially through the use of Facebook, ministry sources said.

Facebook showed their interest to sign the deal with Bangladesh government before 2006 on the condition that the networking site will not take responsibility for the users' posts.

The government has blocked Facebook and other online messaging and calling services WhatsApp and Viber since November 18.

But Tarana said there is no relation between opening Facebook and this letter.

Currently there are 1.8 crore Facebook account in the country, and of its most of the users are young.