The government’s recent initiative—an independent Cyber Police Unit with more than 4000 officers—is undoubtedly a notable institutional development. Bringing cybercrime functions under a single structure could help address a problem that has become hard to overlook.
However, the key question is not how many officers have been appointed to tackle cybercrimes, but whether those officers will have specialised knowledge, logistical support, legal safeguards, and institutional independence.
Fortunately, the proposed structure allows specialists to be appointed on a contract basis and provides for advanced training. But with the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence, cybercrime is no longer simply about hacking. Offenders can now use AI tools to craft manipulative phishing texts, images, and audio, and automate parts of malicious activity. Interpol has warned that deepfake impersonation and AI-enhanced fraud are becoming significant challenges for law enforcement.
This creates a difficult legal problem. Suppose a victim receives a threatening video, or an audio recording sounds like an official authorising a financial transaction, or a photograph shows an accused person at a particular location.
In the past, the question might have been whether the digital file was genuine. In the age of generative AI, investigators must also ask whether something was artificially created. Proving the authenticity of digital evidence in court is just as crucial as collecting it at the police station. While Bangladesh’s Evidence (Amendment) Act, 2022 legally recognises electronic records, relying on digital proof raises complex challenges around manipulation, integrity, and chain of custody. Merely being able to extract digital files does not mean an investigator is equipped to defend their reliability before a judge.
Thus, the new unit needs a strong forensic architecture. The whole process from seizure to presentation of the digital evidence before the court should be handled with caution. Investigators should have sufficient knowledge about metadata, logs, device imaging, cloud storage, and the limitations of AI detection tools.
While AI tools can help detect manipulated data, they can also make manipulated materials harder to differentiate from original evidence. Interpol has pointed out that AI tools could create false evidence or make original evidence appear fake.
Effective cyber policing requires a careful balance—greater enforcement power must be matched with stronger legal safeguards. While the Cyber Security Act, 2026 explicitly incorporates AI tools and AI-generated data into its definition of cyberspace, it also grants police specific authority to address hacking, unauthorised access, and threats to digital evidence.
These powers may be necessary for effective investigation. But cyber investigations can also expose enormous amounts of private information, including messages, photographs, financial records, location data, and personal communications. Therefore, the new unit should operate under clear rules concerning search, seizure, data retention, access to personal information and the handling of irrelevant private material.
Cyber policing can easily affect journalists, researchers, whistleblowers and ordinary citizens whose online activities may be misunderstood or taken out of context. The government’s current effort to further modernise cyber-security legislation should therefore prioritise precise definitions, judicial oversight and meaningful procedural safeguards. Moreover, our country needs a multidisciplinary institution that can bring together investigators, prosecutors, digital forensic experts, computer scientists, financial investigators, legal professionals and cyber security specialists.
Technological advancement can boost functions, while legal provisions can give authority, but nothing will change without strong accountability, real expertise, and full respect for the process.
Md. Nazmul Hossain Sefat is a researcher and former lecturer of law.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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