Spoofing politicians on Facebook no more?

A while ago Indi had this hilarious post on Mahinda and Mervyn on Facebook. Clearly satirical, the profiles and whoever who set them up were interrogating the behaviour of two prominent political figures in Sri Lanka. And it was very nicely done.

I can’t find the profiles anymore and perhaps just as well. If the Sri Lankan regime was to take a page off the Indian Government, then whoever who set up that profile may be in for a rude shock. As TechCrunch reports, 22-year-old IT professional Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid based in Haryana was arrested by the Indian Police because he had said he hated Sonia Gandhi in Orkut, Google’s social networking site. 

This isn’t the first time Google has capitulated to local laws. Last year, the International Federation of Journalists hit hard against Google for its censorship deal with the Thai government. 

The wider question is whether anything we say on social networking sites, ostensibly amongst friends and only for friends, is safe from prying eyes and government censorship / control. Earlier this year Facebook exposed private photos to unauthorised users and as The Register reports, in “June 2007, it was disclosed that Facebook was divulging users’ political views, religious background and other sensitive details to the world at large even when that information was supposed to be given only to a user’s designated friends. MySpace has made similar gaffes.”

Is it time we revisited all our profiles and see what’s really on them? 

UPDATED – 11:41PM

I had forgotten about the Mahinda Rajapakse blog. Again, good stuff but I wonder how long before someone, somewhere takes offense and decides to block WordPress in Sri Lanka.

ICTs in state-building

An excellent paper by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart who I met during Strong Angel III titled Writing The History Of The Future: Securing Stability through Peace Agreements suggests that ICTs could play a central role in state building, but too often don’t. 

“Enormous scope exists to examine the possibilities for rethinking electoral processes, voter registration, census preparation and citizen database preparation in light of modern technology, to enable more frequent but transparent elections at a fraction of the cost at the same time as build an information base for governance.”

Ashraf and Clare are heading The Institute for State Effectiveness and I hope they look more closely at the relationships engendered by mobile phones between peoples (not all of whom may be citizens) and the State as it is constituted and imagined today. As I have suggested earlier and other writers have also confirmed, mobile phones are changing old assumptions on human security, sustainable development and citizen empowerment.

No think tank that attempts to envision the future of the State can afford to ignore their role and encourage further their fullest integration into democratic polity and society. 

Bloody games = bloody conflict?

Here we go again.

From the Guardian comes news of new research conducted on the amount of virtual blood in a videogame and its impact on real-life aggression.I guess there’s going to be a renewed spate of research on this with the sale of GTA IV that’s broken more than a few records in the entertainment industry and entered the Guinness Book of Records to boot. 

One of the most read posts on this blog was one I wrote quite a while back on the video games and gender, where I noted that,

While studies may help us better understand the linkages between in-game violence, gender and real life conflict, I don’t think that any study I’ve come across to date help me understand how it is possible for someone to blow themselves up to kill and maim otherswhile others, no less discriminated against, continue to promote non-violent dialogue with their opponents.

This is also the essence of a great debate I had with Colin Rule on this blog on the nature gaming violence and how it could affect real world behaviour.

This incessant singling out of computer games for their violence and its potential to promote real world violence seems to ignore one simple fact in most households. Good parenting. I played Castle Wolfenstein, then Doom, then Quake I, II and III and Duke Nukem 3D for hours on end. I loved to kill at random and when I got sick of killing the enemies, I killed my team mates. Just to see how the AI of the game would respond to that illogic. Today though I use ICTs to build peace, I would still like to play GTA IV or the stunning Crysis on the rare PC that can run it well. 

I guess I’m an ill-fit into these studies of gaming violence. 

The information and media landscape in Sri Lanka

Burning Bridge has an excellent write up on the information and media landscape in Sri Lanka and its role in conflict and peacebuilding. 

Though new, the blog already has some other excellent posts on the intersections of information and conflict.