Dhaka Bureau: The Election Commission (EC) has suddenly stopped the National Identity Card (NID) service without any prior announcement. Yesterday, Tuesday, this public service was closed all day. The service is scheduled to resume at 2 p.m. today, Wednesday. This information is known from related sources. In a message sent by Aminul Islam, Assistant Programmer of EC’s Information System Management Directorate (NID), yesterday, it was mentioned that server maintenance work has been going on since Tuesday (September 19) morning.
Due to ongoing maintenance work, all NID-related services will remain closed until 2 p.m. on Wednesday. Sincerely sorry for the inconvenience. Meanwhile, EC officials are also expressing their anger about the sudden and repeated shutdown of NID services without prior announcement. According to them, public notice should be issued before the closure of this service of public importance. Many have NID-related work. Besides, 171 institutions have taken NID verification services from EC. These institutions, along with common people, have to face various sufferings due to the closure of this service without prior announcement.
Therefore, the Commission should issue a public notification before discontinuing this service. It is known that earlier, to prevent cyber attacks, the NID server was shut down for 38 hours from 12:00 PM on August 14, and EC was launched on August 16 around 2:00 PM. Recently, the birth and death registration registrar’s office’s information has come to light. After that, under the guidance of the ICT department, the EC has also formed its own cert to ensure greater security of the NID server. Meanwhile, a hacker group called ‘Indian Cyber Force’ had earlier threatened cyber attacks on important institutions of the country on September 19 (Tuesday). When asked about this, Mohammad Saiful Alam Khan, Director of the BGD E-Gov Cert Project, said on Tuesday that cyber attacks can happen at any time. No major cyberattacks have been reported so far.
He also said that there is no alternative to being constantly vigilant about cyberattacks. Earlier on July 31, a cyberattack was threatened by an Indian hacker group. In view of this, in a notification on August 3, Sart said that a hacker group has threatened a cyber attack on Bangladesh on August 15. In view of that threat, on August 9, the ICT department held a meeting with 29 organizations of the government’s important information infrastructure and other organizations.
