Significant issues arising out of the Private Television Broadcasting Station Regulations of 2007 for bloggers and new media producers in Sri Lanka

Drafted by Sanjana Hattotuwa, Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives. Not to be quoted without attribution. 

 

• (Used as a background note in the discussion on the regulations with Beyond Borders on 22nd November 2008)
• Download the proposed regulations here.
• Download this document as a formatted PDF here. 

1.     The absence of any definition of broadcasting results in a number of significant problems. To broadcast means to transmit to every receiving station within a geographic area. Terrestrial TV, FM and AM radio are examples of broadcast networks. Terrestrial analog broadcasting involves a linear programming schedule – at a certain time of day, a specific programme will be exclusively shown on a particular channel to which anyone within the geographical footprint of the broadcast and with requisite equipment can tune into. 

2.     Any definition of broadcasting is also inextricably tied to a mass media. A broadcaster transmits content to a significant proportion of the general public. Examples of broadcasters in Sri Lanka include Rupavahini, Ada Derana, SLBC and Shree FM.

3.     Broadcasting is one-to-many transmission of information. Any terrestrial analog TV broadcast can be tuned into by anyone with an Ultra-High Frequency (UHF), Very High Frequency (VHF) antenna. It is technically impossible to limit the reception of a broadcast to a select audience or group of persons within the footprint of said broadcast.

4.     A broadcast is not a two-way conversation with the audience. All analog radios and televisions in Sri Lanka are incapable of transmitting information, only receiving. Live audience participation can only occur through independent telephony and not through the terrestrial broadcast spectrum.

5.     Ergo, the conflation of terrestrial, cable, satellite, Internet and mobile telephony based broadcasting in Regulation 2 (b) (i), 2 (b) (ii), 2 (b) (iii), 2 (b) (iv) and 2 (b) (V) respectively is exceedingly problematic since a common definition of broadcasting cannot and does not apply to these diverse delivery platforms and modes.

6.     While broadcast regulations were the result of, and exist on account of the scarcity of the electromagnetic spectrum available for the transmission of audio-visual and other information over the air, the vastly different and superior technical and physical characteristics of satellite, cable based and particularly Internet based broadcasting render meaningless broadcast regulations based on spectrum management. The Internet is different from other communications media, including terrestrial spectrum based broadcast media in that individuals have the option of accessing and receiving video content from a potentially infinite number of sources, although their ability to do so may be constrained by technical issues such as bandwidth availability, quality of service in broadband connections and content viewing restrictions of countries where servers or producers are located.

7.      Read in conjunction with Regulation 2 (e), Regulation 2 (b) (iv) is particularly problematic, since it does not demonstrate an understanding of (a) the vastly different models of television delivery using the Internet or related to this point (b) recognise the vital distinction between a broadcaster and a user who generates tele-visual content for distribution via the Internet.

8.     First, with regard to Point 7 (a) in this document, the first and to date only broadcaster of television under the basis of the method enumerated in Regulation 2 (b) (iv) is Sri Lanka Telecom, through a product called Peo, operating as IP TV (http://www.peotv.com/index.php).

9.     IP TV refers to transmission of TV over IP networks. More specifically, IPTV is a service that is developed using a number of converged technologies to transmit TV over Internet Protocol (IP) networks and receive it using different terminals. IPTV is a radical innovation based on the convergence between broadcasting, IT and telecom networks. There is a critical distinction between using IPTV for the delivery of TV through dedicated/managed broadband networks and delivering WEB TV/Internet TV, i.e. TV over the open Internet.

10. A definition for IPTV is given by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU):

‘an IPTV service (or technology) is the new convergence service (or technology) of the telecoms and broadcasting through Quality of Service (QoS) controlled Broadband Convergence IP Network including wire and wireless for the managed, controlled and secured delivery of a considerable number of multimedia contents such as Video, Audio, data and applications processed by platform to a customer via Television, PDA, Cellular, and Mobile TV terminal with STB module or similar device’. (http://www.cable-quest.in/october2008/gudeline_for_iptv.html )

11. IP TV content / programming is delivered over an exclusive network managed usually by a telecommunications company. Technically, IP TV is carefully engineered to ensure high video and audio quality to each subscriber, who has to pay to view content unlike free-to-receive terrestrial broadcasts.

12. IP TV is geographically bound and offers the same programming / content as cable and satellite providers. Leveraging technical aspects unique to IP TV and its exclusive and tight integration with the telecommunications provider’s telephony network, service and products, IP TV broadcasters can opt to provide features such as time-shifting and on-demand content (non-linear programming) as well as integration with voice and data communications (e.g. real time voting for entertainment programmes).

13. In contradistinction to IPTV and based on Point 7 (b) raised in this document, Internet Video or Internet Television or tele-visual content produced by users, for other users, to be viewed on demand via streaming over the internet or as downloadable video-casts (vodcasts) that can be viewed offline is fundamentally different to IP TV.

14. Internet Television is based on the same publishing and production model that the world wide web (WWW) is built upon – any can create an endpoint (a place to access content) and publish that endpoint on a global basis. Internet video is not tied to a telecommunication company’s network, services or product – it exists independently of any carrier and network operator.

15. The Consolidated Text of the Draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union published on 16^th April 2007, which is under consideration as a framework to regulate, inter alia, television broadcast in the European Union notes in this regard that proposed regulations will not cover

“…activities which are primarily non-economic and which are not in competition with television broadcasting, such as private website and services consisting of the provision or distribution of audiovisual content generated by private users for the purposes of sharing and exchange within communities of interest.” (‘Draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive’, April 2007, http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/reg/modernisation/proposal_2005/avmsd_cons_amend_0307_en.pdf )

16. Whereas IP TV has the option of broadcasting content according to a schedule or on-demand (a linear non linear model), Internet Television is, by default overwhelmingly on-demand and non linear. User generated videos on websites such as YouTube (www.youtube.com), Vimeo (www.vimeo.com) and on web based social networking sites such as MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com) can all be viewed on-demand over any broadband enabled PC or mobile device.

17. In sum, though both share similarities in the underlying content transport layer (using IP based networks) IP TV and user generated Internet Television are fundamentally different video production and dissemination models. Attempting to conflate both for purposes of regulating content is, at best, meaningless.

18. Furthermore, in light of these concerns, Regulations 2 (b) (iv), and 2 (b) (v) read alongside Regulations 9 (b) and 10 (b) in particular raise very serious concerns on the Freedom of Expression on the web and Internet in Sri Lanka.

19. The stipulation for all ‘broadcasters’ to enter into an ‘agreement’ that is unspecified in the Gazette, with the Internet Service Provider who provides access to the web and Internet is a draconian measure pointedly designed to curtail and block independent and free production, access and transmission of, inter alia, video content over the Internet and the web.

20. This is particularly concerning since, to expand on what was flagged in Point 4 of this document, video over the Internet also encourages and facilitates easy audience participation in the form of text and video feedback and comments. Holding ‘broadcasters’ in Sri Lanka, including ISPs, responsible for not just user generated content, but also user generated comments to content published from other sources, is a regulatory nightmare and technically impossible to comply with.

21. The lack of any clearly defined framework for the nature and scope of the ‘agreement’ enumerated in Regulations 9 (b) and 10 (b) has disturbing and negative implications for the rights of all wired and wireless broadband customers in particular – including all ADSL, 3G mobile telephony and 3G HSPA mobile broadband modem users – as well as all citizens, since those who may not be a customer of an ISP could still use the internet to disseminate video productions (e.g. video content that is uploaded through a cybercafé). 

22. There are 63,300 broadband subscribers as of March 2008 according to the ITU (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/InformationTechnologyPublic&RP_intYear=2007&RP_intLanguageID=1) in Sri Lanka and this number is estimated to grow at an annual growth rate of 22-25% during 2008-2011 (http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/41335/). These numbers don’t take into account the growth of 3G mobile phone based wireless broadband subscribers, who with modern mobile phones, can produce, upload, disseminate and access video from their handsets. These numbers are impossible to manage technically in a manner that guarantees ISPs are compliant with, in particular, Regulations 13 (e), 15 (a) and 26 (1).

23. Since all State owned and privately owned ISPs in Sri Lanka are risk averse and for example have blocked www.tamilnet.com since July 2007 without any public acknowledgement of the source and legality of the orders so given, it is highly probable that ISPs will impose draconian limitations on the qualitative nature of video content produced, disseminated, archived or otherwise referenced through their networks.

24. The wording of the Gazette also refers ‘channels’, a term rendered meaningless in the context of Point 16 of this document, where YouTube (www.youtube.com) alone showed a year on year growth of 1,972% (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1193) and in January 2007 alone had 54.7 million unique viewers, and 1.17 billion video streams. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/even-slowing-growth-youtube-remains/story.aspx?guid=%7B98FB4A03-0B53-4CFB-BA2D-716D2B59CAAB%7D) Whereas the notion of a channel first applied to terrestrial video and radio broadcasts and to varying degrees still applies to the basis of broadcasts enumerated in Regulations 2 (b) (ii) and 2 (b) (iii), they are meaningless in the context of free to view and platform / device agnostic video streams available within and outside Sri Lanka that can play on any broadband enabled PCs or mobile device.

25. This fact is pertinent when interpreting Regulation 15 (1) (a) in relation particularly to those who use the technologies noted in Regulations 2 (b) (iv) and 2 (b) (v). It is technically impossible to identify the potential number of ‘channels’ that can be broadcast and accessed over TV on the Internet through a PC connected to any broadband Internet connection or 3G mobile. ISPs cannot be asked to provide such information because they cannot and even if it was hypothetically possible to provide a list of the millions of video streams on the internet today, it would be woefully outdated in less than 24 hours given the nature and growth of video content and the Internet and web in general.

26. Regulations 9 (b) and 10 (b) are also technically unfeasible for another reason linked to Point 4 of this document. All subscribers of 3G services who have 3G mobile phones and all subscribers of wired and wireless broadband Internet access in Sri Lanka are, given the lack of any meaningful definition of ‘broadcaster’ in this Gazette coupled with the confusion between commercial IP TV broadcast models and user generated video content production models, subject to these regulations. Though aimed at Private TV broadcasters, the over broad scope and nature of the Regulations and the onus placed on ISPs to regulate content over their networks severely undermines the freedom of expression of end-users, including citizen journalists, media personnel and activists, for example, who document human rights abuses by the State.

27. Regulation 19 is particularly disturbing in this regard for it imposes an unfair and unworkable condition on ISPs to ensure that all content on all their networks are compliant with points enumerated in Regulation 13 (e). Given the wealth of video content on one site alone brought out in Point 22, the power given to the Minister to suspend a license of an ISP has catastrophic implications. ISPs are unlike broadcasters or television studios. Video content is a subset of telephony and Internet communications that ISPs facilitate to millions of subscribers. Cancelling the video-broadcasting license of an ISP under this gazette essentially prevents ALL customers from producing, accessing and disseminating video content though its network(s). This is an untenable proposition.

28. What is important to flag here is also the concern that ISPs, cognisant of the issues noted in Point 25 of this document and keen to not lose their license, interpret the non-defined ‘agreement’ stated in Regulation 9 (b) and 10 (b) to create legally binding frameworks with customers to severely censor video content produced, accessed and disseminated on its network(s).

29. Monitoring the performance of licensees to ensure due compliance with the provisions of the Regulation as noted by Regulation 14 (a) is again overbroad and meaningful when talking of TV on the Internet or mobile devices. Whereas such monitoring may not be desirable with the mode of broadcasts enumerated in Regulation 2 (b) (i), 2 (b) (ii) and 2 (b) (iii) it is technically possible to do so. Further, it is technically possible – given the limited selection of channels and technology used – to monitor IP TV broadcasts. However, it is technically impossible to monitor all video content on the Internet or, as Regulation 15 (2) stipulates “maintain electronic copies of all the material broadcasted… for a minimum period of sixty days.” No broadcaster and ISP in Sri Lanka have the massive technical, financial and human resources to comply with this Regulation.

30. With regards to the transmission of content which originates outside the territory of Sri Lanka for the view of the public within Sri Lanka, as noted in Regulation 26 (1), the Gazette again enumerates a stipulation rendered meaningless and unworkable by the nature of television content on the internet that can be accessed via PC and 3G mobile devices. While Regulation 26 (1) can be imposed on terrestrial broadcasts as well as cable TV, satellite TV and specifically IP TV it cannot, in any way, regulate television content already on the internet and that will be produced henceforth that can be, by the nature of the Internet, accessible freely over any Internet enabled device over a broadband connection. Compliance with Regulation 26 (1) for ISPs will quite simply mean that they have to block, carte blanche, every single website and Internet location containing video content originating outside the territory of Sri Lanka. Given the growth of websites and content, even this is technically unfeasible for ISPs, but even in a limited form will lead to unacceptable and egregious censorship of (video) content on the web and Internet.

31. Finally, it is unclear whether political parties who choose to produce and disseminate video content to educate the general public on their practices and policies will be able to do so henceforth under Regulations included in this Gazette. Whereas today political parties can potentially broadcast their message using any of the means flagged in Regulation 2 (b) (i) through to 2 (b) (v), content deemed to contravene Regulation 13 (e) by the Minister may result in the ISPs as well as traditional broadcasters refusing to help produce, transmit and archive party political content especially from political parties not part of the incumbent government. However, because it is the nature of government to change after elections, ISPs and traditional broadcasters may find that content that was fit to be broadcast under one regime may be precisely that which puts their license at risk under another. This will invariably lead to a situation where the general public and voters will be denied video content that can educate them on vital issues, alternatives, vital policy debates and severely undermine their right to information. 

Censored uncensored

Censored, which I first wrote about here, was fun overall.

Aside from the fact that your author gave the worst possible rendition of a brutish intelligence officer when called upon to enact a scene, the event succeeded in getting people to think about and articulate resolutions to the performance based on an actual incident. 

Theatrically, a couple of things stood out. One, the acting could have been much better. Theatre in Sri Lanka often annoyingly confuses shrieking, shouting or screaming (which have their specific uses on stage) with projecting one’s voice, and Anupama Lakshi Dias playing the role of a journalist was particularly afflicted in this regard.

A group of us were also very partial to the Ruwanthi’esque style of Forum Theatre, where you didn’t rewind the entire production to the beginning to incorporate audience reactions. It was just a waste of time, and Guru should have just got actors to play out some of the comments / ideas from the audience in a linear fashion or as scenes that fleshed out an event, character or alternative path / ending. 

Comments made by the rather annoying John Martin, Director Pan Centre for Inter-cultural Arts UK at the end, suggesting that the media and legal mechanisms could be leveraged better to combat censorship ran the risk of turning Censored from forum theatre into the theatre of the absurd. I intensely dislike it when an individual, particularly one who is so demonstrably ignorant of the growing and multi-faceted challenges to media freedom, FOE and human rights advocacy in Sri Lanka, attempts to ‘make sense’ of the production and tell us what we should be thinking about when driving back home. Thanks but no thanks – the raison d’etre of Forum Theatre is not to preach simplistic feel good catch-phrases, but to stimulate conversation on tough issues with no easy resolution.  

While the goons from the B&S National Intelligence Bureau looked suitably thuggish and uncivilized, it would have been useful and more interesting to counter the stereotype. In 1973, Philip Zimbardo (now Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University) carried out a classic, but highly controversial, experiment to investigate the psychological effects of imprisonment. The details of this experiment are in the public domain and make for interesting reading, but what is noteworthy here is that Zimbardo demonstrated through his experiment the power of social, institutional forces to make good men and women engage in evil deeds. This is a phenomenon that I’ve written about in the Sri Lankan context in The banality of evil and is actually a theme picked up by a recent, viscerally compelling web campaign against torture by Amnesty International,

We then thought about the interrogators. We needed some kind of narrative structure to counterbalance the images of the prisoner in pain. Our thoughts were about how torture de-humanises everyone, including the interrogator. The part of the interrogator was played by Richard Loudon, an actor and member of Sheffield’s seminal Forced Entertainment. Stress Positions is all about time duration. It’s not short, sharp, shock. So we imagined the interrogator in our film just simply waiting, getting bored… and talking to his daughter on his mobile phone (a simple, ordinary daily life type thing). We found this juxtaposition probably more authentic and chilling than if we had cast the interrogator as some kind of psychotic. 

Watch AI’s Waiting for the Guards – the Director’s story here. 

Audience reactions were interesting. One comment that amused a group of us came from a woman seated up front who suggested that giving up the name of the friend under interrogation was betrayal. Clearly then, we were privileged to have in the audience possibly the only human in the world who will never, ever, ever give up information under the duress of water-boarding, stress-positions and sleep depravation. One other person asked for the ‘nationality’ of a character on stage to be made more explicit, forgetting perhaps that we are all Sri Lankans. Another woman (a foreigner), who actually did a remarkably good job enacting the role of an office manager who firmly stands up to the intrusion of intelligence personnel in search of an employee, simply missed the point that Guru articulated afterwards – you wouldn’t find them in real life.

I’ve found the commitment of Beyond Borders to strengthen and support youth activism and the meaningful participation of youth in democracy, governance and rights issues and processes is extremely admirable. BB’s strength also lies in its ability to use a range of media – from theatre to web activism – to widen and deepen vital debates amongst youth and other audiences. It’s really heartening to see issues such as the freedom of expression taken up for discussion and public scrutiny through forum theatre. It is precisely here that BB scores over the traditional media freedom organisations in Sri Lanka, which sadly to date do not and cannot engage youth as equal participants in their work. This is also why I am looking forward to the event I am co-organising with BB this Saturday as an opportunity flesh out some of the issues that cropped up last evening.

I hope they stage Censored again, and importantly, take it out of Colombo. Not enough of this theatre is done in Sri Lanka today.

Future of the Media Industry : Keynote presentation at SAFMA Sri Lankan Chapter AGM, 2008

The keynote presentation I delivered at the Sri Lankan chapter of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) Annual General Meeting held on 12th November in Colombo.

Gagging the web and Internet: Implications of the proposed Private TV Broadcasting Regulations in Sri Lanka

Censorship of media in Sri Lanka isn’t a new phenomenon, but the Rajapakse regime took it a step further recently when it recently promulgated a new set of regulations through a gazette notification, called the Private Television Broadcasting Station Regulations. The over broad and ill-defined regulations, in parts copied and pasted verbatim from Indian Cable TV and IP TV regulations, were a measure to further undermine independent media in Sri Lanka.

On 14th November 2008, the Supreme Court, issuing a stay order suspending the operation of these regulations, granted a case lodged by the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association and others who opposed the proposed regulations as an affront to the freedom of expression leave to proceed. The case is to be heard on 26 January 2009.

Disturbingly, the proposed regulations are a significant challenge to all bloggers in Sri Lanka, since they seek to hold accountable all ISPs for the qualitative nature of the content transmitted, accessed and produced using their networks and further, makes no distinction between IP TV (e.g. SLT’s PeoTV) and TV / televisual content over the web and Internet (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo).

To discuss the implications of these proposed regulations, I’ll facilitate a roundtable discussion together with Beyond Borders on the 22nd November, from 3.45pm to 6pm at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI). I hope this discussion will animate youth activists and bloggers in Sri Lanka to take individual and collective action against these regulations which particularly under the Rajapakse regime and also future governments can be used to censor, at will, (video) content on the web and Internet.

Read the agenda for the discussion here. Read the background briefing for the discussion, written from the perspective of a new media producer / blogger / web activist critiquing the proposed regulations as a PDF here.

The participation I have in mind are youth activists, new media producers and bloggers, NOT mainstream media journalists, or senior staff / heads of the communications units of of NGOs, INGOs or CSOs. There’s no real cut off age, but I want to target this discussion at compelling new voices, who may not agree with each other, but are passionate about self-expression using web and online media on the Internet. We already have the confirmed participation of some of Sri Lanka’s most recognised and respected voices in the blogosphere.

Please confirm your participation with Beyond Borders or myself, since seats are limited at the venue.

Bearing witness to War: Five years of the war in Iraq

Bearing witness to the atrocities, brutality and embedded humanity in war is difficult. Embedded journalism is fraught with challenges and even projects like Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone faced problems of continued support for sustained coverage. 

In this context comes a compelling website from Reuters, documenting 5 years of a tragic war in Iraq. Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War documents in through an interactive timeline, maps and other multimedia, facets of war and life in Iraq after the US led invasion of the country in March 2003. There are some disturbing, viscerally compelling images here by Goran Tomasevic.

There is, and never can be, any single source or definitive account of a war. Efforts such as this however, through captivating visuals and an interactive narrative, pull in viewers to critically look at a brutal, useless war that we have long since normalised. 

Closer to home, and we will never find photographic evidence of this nature on our own on-going war. More accurately, photos taken for propaganda exclude more than they seek to explore or highlight. There is a qualitative difference between Goran’s photos and those on TRO’s Flickr stream, the Sri Lankan Army website or those featured in any number of Sinhala and Tamil diaspora sites that exclusively feature the brutality of the ‘other’, but never the consequences of one’s own violence.

Censored – Forum theatre on freedom of expression at a time of war

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirise all orthodoxies, including religious orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.”

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands

It’s the first time I’ve written on theatre on this blog, and with good reason. Censored, a forum theatre production by Beyond Borders in association with the British Council, will take to the stage on the 20th of this month.

Watch it. Participate in it.

Censorship has been with us ever since the production of knowledge, and it certainly won’t go away. The internet and web were supposed to emancipate us from shackles of parochialism and ignorance, and to an extent have. However, governments, non-state actors and today, even Internet Service Providers, constantly find new ways and new reasons to curtail and block information flows.

From burning ’satanic Harry Potter‘ books, to the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum, from the Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 in England to more recent moves in Sri Lanka to censor information on the internet and mobiles, polity and society everywhere has grappled with the free production of information and the maintenance of public order, national security, morals et al.

In Sri Lanka, the Rajapakse regime censors every way they can, everything they can, as often as they can – beginning at Sri Lanka’s borders and extending to TV, websites and war reporting. But censorship in Sri Lanka isn’t a new phenomenon. As Asanga Welikala, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (and close friend of this author) notes in A State of Permanent Crisis: Constitutional Government, Fundamental Rights and States of Emergency in Sri Lanka:

In May and June 1958, in Ceylon, occurred what were up till then the most serious communal riots in Sri Lanka’s troubled history of ethnic relations. In retrospect, the events of 1958 were mere portents of the horrors that were to come. A contemporaneous journalistic account of what happened was written by Tarzie Vittachi, editor of Asia’s oldest newspaper, the Ceylon Observer, satirical columnist, and intrepid political commentator. In the context of the blanket censorship imposed under Sri Lanka’s first post-independence experience of emergency rule, the manuscript was published in London under the title Emergency ’58 by Andre Deutsch, in what has now become a classic of Sri Lankan political literature. The book was banned in Ceylon, and Tarzie Vittachi subsequently left the country, under the cloud of death threats.

The issue of censorship recently came to a head with the Private Television Broadcasting Station Regulations introduced by the Rajapakse regime. Overbroad, ill defined and outrageously conflating technical standards and concepts such as IP TV with video over the internet, with no definition of broadcast and with for reason other than to clamp down on dissent and criticism of the Rajapakse regime, journalist Namini Wijedasa was spot on when she said that the regulations placed media at the mercy of idiot ministers.

The regulations have a particularly sinister bent, in that they can be used by the regime as well as by ISPs (fearful of losing their broadcast license) to censor video over the internet, which affects all bloggers in Sri Lanka whether they produce video content themselves or wish to consume content on sites such as YouTube.

The freedom of expression is by no means an absolute right. One finds in European and American jurisprudence, particularly with regard to the interpretation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights and the First Amendment of the American Constitution by the US Supreme Court respectively, a healthy debate on the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression. My own interest in the issue comes from the perspective of communicative rights, that all peoples have a right to access and participate in the creation of a wide and diverse range of information and views.

Sri Lanka is far removed from a country able to discuss, openly and meaningfully, what freedom of expression really means and why it is important to safeguard and strengthen even when dealing with terrorists and terrorism. As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted

“Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war…Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.”

If I have a gripe, it is that the performance is only slated for a single night. Given the monumental challenges facing the freedom of expression in Sri Lanka, I encourage the producers to consider staging Censored again, and importantly, staging it out of Colombo and the Western Province.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari on ICT4Peace

Statement of Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2008 delivered at High-level meeting to discuss the Interim Report of the stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities, held on 7th November 2008 at the United Nations in New York.

For more information on the stocktaking process with the UN, click here.  

Obama, the web, the Internet and mobiles

One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.

How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics, Claire Cain Miller, NY Times

It’s passe to suggest the implications arising out of the way Obama and his campaign leveraged the web and the Internet. While many say he outsmarted McCain, let’s not forget that he also outsmarted Hillary Clinton. When they were both battling it out for the Party nomination, there was a lot of commentary on the significant differences in their two websites, in both content and design / presentation. Obama’s website signified a very different approach to and understanding of the power of the Internet to shape electoral politics in the US today. Obama’s site design was matched by a team that understood social networking, mobile phone activism, traditional email campaigns, online video and multimedia and more generally, just using the web to animate the campaign and its supporters, including for example setting up micro-sites against smear attacks by Hillary Clinton. It was also clear that the Hillary camp realised the importance of the web to encourage or disenchant voters when in June 2008 they revamped the website and took off all the attacks Obama. 

The NY Times article will be a harbinger of many more that analyse in more detail ways in which Obama and his campaign team was able to animate and engage a younger vote base, very familiar with ICTs and new media as their preferred and oftentimes only means of creating, accessing, disseminating and engaging with content and discussions the politics of the US Presidential elections. Obama’s telegenics helped, but more through YouTube than through terrestrial or cable TV.

Obama’s was a hip, fresh, vibrant campaign – and being here in the US both during Super Tuesday in February and when Obama won, it’s easy to see why he and his campaign appealed to first time voters and younger voters (as well as other age groups). As others have noted,

What impressed me about the text-message campaign was that it was an effective device for collecting millions of voter contacts, while also signaling that Obama connects with young people. This won’t do much to persuade 50-something independents in the Midwest, but this is the type of marketing campaign that will get young people to register and to get to the poll.

And it hasn’t stopped with Obama’s victory at the election. A new site – www.change.gov – at least for the moment, continues the engagement he had during the campaign (or more importantly, perceived engagement) with voters in the US. A Flickr photostream shows hundreds of photos in support of Obama, and not just from those who voted for him.

There are lessons here for engaging citizens interested in the promotion of democracy even under repressive regimes like Sri Lanka today, some of which I will be keenly experimenting with in the months to come.

Information (in)security at the United Nations, New York

In June this year, I was appalled to realise that colleagues in Sri Lanka mindlessly wrote sensitive information on public information boards. 

At a meeting today on the 21st level of the UN Secretariat in New York, ironically discussing ways to break down firewalls – technical, processual, managerial etc – that prevent information sharing within and between UN agencies, I was very surprised to discover computers and shared folders on hard disk drives, accessible freely over the UN’s open wifi network, that contained highly confidential personal and institutional information.

 

This screenshot, with sensitive and personal identity markers blocked out, shows bank records, agency audit reports, internal documents and other confidential information belonging to a well known UN figure and a UN agency. The drive in the screenshot above is an Apple Time Capsule, clearly used as a backup hard drive. 

You can also see the range of other computers and hard drives available over the open wifi network that one could browse at will. Frighteningly, this particular Time Capsule even allowed Guests to delete files. 

Given that anyone who enters or in fact is close to the Secretariat (e.g. from 1st Avenue) can access the UN’s powerful public and unsecured wifi signal, this is a significant problem and speaks that even institutions that only know too well the risks associated with information leaks unable to address the fact key members of staff have little or no understanding of information security.

As I noted in my earlier post,

InfoShare’s significant experience in the design and deployment of highly secure ICT solutions for peacebuilding / human rights protection suggests that network intrusions and data leaks are often the result of the monumental carelessness and oversight of end users rather than any sophisticating remote hacking by a third party. Sustained user education on security is vital and the design of information systems with multiple safeguards against this sort of bad practice.

Video interview with Rohan Samarajiva on telecoms in Sri Lanka

A video interview with Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director of Lirneasia and former Director General of Sri Lanka Telecom on telecoms regulations, disaster mitigation, preparedness and early warning, mobile phone usage at the B.O.P and a number of other technology related issues pertinent to Sri Lanka.