Information and Power

GOTABHAYA RAJAPAKSA, A FORMER UNIX SYSTEMS ADMIN strangely enough, has leveraged the Internet pretty well. One story which has slipped under the radar during these news heavy weeks is his department’s call for an online registry of citizens (citizens.lk). I’m not sure of the legality of this.

It’s a pretty wide-ranging and intrusive government measure and it was enacted without any Parliamentary or other debate, by an unelected official. Its only saving grace is that it’s pretty much impossible for everyone in this country to register online as there are probably only about 3-400,000 people with proper Internet connections. Honestly, if they could simply get every Sri Lankan to connect to the Internet (even in this draconian way) that would be cool. But as it is, this will probably go the way of the Internet porn ban. Straight out of the realm of fiction, into farce.

The scary thing about citizens.lk is the racial part. There’s a clear dropdown for race. In most US government and professional situations, identifying your race is voluntary. Here I presume it is not. Race is a sensitive issue in any country, but in Sri Lanka, with its unresolved and untended ethnic problem this is more so. Furthermore, I wonder what half Sinhalese/Tamils (Ligers, or Tions) are supposed to do.

It’s also a bit weird how aggressively the Ministry of Defence wields information as power. From shutting down TamilNet, radio stations, etc. to the Law and Order climate where presses are burned (Leader), TV stations are torched (Sirasa) and journalists shot (Lasantha, etc) - the environment is such that opposing views are pretty well silenced. Furthermore, Gotabhaya just recently was referring to various journalists as terrorists on national TV, by name. Into this void he’s launched defence.lk and skillfully used SMS news (like the main Derana) to ration out war news like short-eats.