Dialog Telekom takes out HSPA+ poster online, TRC to investigate false claims?

LBO reports today that the Telecom Regulatory Commission has begun investigations on broadband speeds advertised by telcos.

“The Telecom Regulatory Commission is conducting its own investigations on mobile broadband speeds advertized by operators,” Priyantha Kariyapperuma, director general of the TRC said. ”If any mobile operator is found guilty of providing slower speeds than advertized, the TRC will take action against them. Our report will be out in about two to three weeks.”

Incoming links to this blog show a number of times a recent post on Dialog Telekom’s blatantly false HSPA+ advertising has been read by online TRC email accounts. Tellingly, Dialog Telekom has taken off the HSPA+ adverts on their corporate Flickr account, which I suspected they would do and precisely why I saved the image of the poster locally for posterity. Further, this Google Cache screenshot shows Dialog’s Flickr page as it was on the 21st of December 2009, with the misleading poster on it.

Erstwhile poster of HSPA+ broadband on Dialog's Flickr account. Click for larger image.

A combination of Lirneasia’s excellent research, possible punitive measures by the TRC after its investigations are completed (or the threat of it) and sustained pressure by consumers (led by bloggers and the media) may reduce the significant divide between what we pay for and actually get.

Some critical thoughts on New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks

New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks, co-authored by Diane Coyle and Patrick Meier and published by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation in 2009 is a simple, yet useful introductory guide to the manner in which ICTs have dramatically changed the way in which we are forewarned about and respond to emergencies, disasters and conflict. The Foreword to the report notes that the report was commissioned to “profile innovation on the frontlines of communications in emergencies, and to point to new opportunities for governments, civil society, and individuals alike to benefit in times of crisis from our increasingly connected world.” Patrick Meier’s blog notes nearly twenty leading tools, platforms and services that are covered in detail in the report,

• Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System (GIVAS)
• European Media Monitor (EMM, aka OPTIMA)
• Emergency Preparedness Information Center (EPIC)
• Ushahidi Crowdsourcing Crisis Information
• Télécoms sans Frontières (TSF)
• Impact of Social Networks in Iran
• Social Media, Citizen Journalism and Mumbai Terrorist Attacks
• Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS)
• InSTEDD RIFF
• UNOSAT
• AAAS Geospatial Technologies for Human Rights
• Info Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action (ITHACA)
• Camp Roberts
• OpenStreetMap and Walking Papers
• UNDP Threat and Risk Mapping Analysis project (TRMA)
• Geo-Spatial Info Analysis for Global Security, Stability Program (ISFEREA)
• FrontlineSMS
• M-PESA and M-PAISA
• Souktel

Despite this spread, the report has come in for some valid criticism in online fora and email newsgroups for not flagging a number of other platforms and processes that currently exist supporting early warning and effective crisis response. The response to this criticism by one of the authors in an email newsgroup I am subscribed to was that the editors of the report had truncated twenty pages from what was originally submitted. It is not clear who these editors are since they are not mentioned in the report, or why this was done. It is also not clear what information was included in these twenty odd pages that was deemed fit to leave out.

But more than the criticism about what’s left out, what I find problematic is what’s included in the report. What’s left out from the report and why, it can always be argued, will never be settled. It is not possible in the space of sixty odd pages to submit a comprehensive study of all the ICTs at play currently in disaster / conflict prevention and response scenarios, given also how much these technologies and their application on the ground change and evolve rapidly. It is therefore no mean feat that the authors have critically captured a few leading examples, and used these case studies to come up with some broader recommendations,which though well-known to the HA/DR community are of enduring relevance and worth reiterating.

However, there is absolutely no indication how the authors chose the technologies they’ve highlighted in the report. We are left to wonder whether the selection was made on personal choice or affiliation, editorial judgement or based on a more robust methodology of research that fails to be mentioned.

Tellingly, save for a solitary reference to the rising incidents of intra-state civil conflict on page 4 of the report, there is no greater reference to, or interrogation of the hydra-headed challenges of designing and implementing ICTs that meaningfully respond to civil strife and the challenges of statebuilding after protracted conflict. This is a failing that I often see from organisations and authors with little or no experience of real world peacebuilding, assuredly different to what’s in most textbooks on the topic. For example, a report by the US based National Academy of Engineering on technology and peacebuilding also falsely asserted that complex political emergencies (CPEs) can explained with simplistic diagrams and further, as a consequence, be easily transformed with the introduction of ICTs. This report could have been informed by what is not an insignificant body of research and work flagging the challenges in using ICTs for conflict prevention and post-conflict recovery documented on this blog alone, and for example on the ICT4Peace Foundation’s site and ICT4Peace Inventory. Lest it be misinterpreted, this is not a submission to include in the report every example herein or on the ICT4Peace wiki. Rather, I would have liked to see the authors far more rigorously flagging the challenges of using technology during and after CPE’s in a report that after all includes ‘conflict’ in its title. I guess a better definition of what the report addressed would have helped, since conflict, crisis, violence and emergencies are not the same.

There are also a number of strange references in the report.

For example, page 7 highlights Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 as an example of disaster preparedness. This is strange. I’m not aware of any significant progress in Myanmar to make communities in the Irrawaddy Delta region more disaster resilient even post-Nargis given the junta’s sui generis approach to humanitarian assistance, and the challenges this rigid approach posed to aid workers and their associated technologies. I certainly am not aware of a single technology solution or tool noted in the report active on the ground in the country before Cyclone Nargis.

There are also significant concerns I have flagged in the past of the nature of ICT tools and platforms deployed post-Nargis which the HA/DR community may find inconvenient to address, but must be posed nevertheless. I stress this point because even more recently announced initiatives like the Emergency Information Service (EIS) by Thomson Reuters Foundation dangerously assume, inter alia, that all governments provide free entry to aid agencies, respect the Tampare Conventions and sport a benign attitude towards the UN’s Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework. However, not every disaster reflects the nature, context, attitudes and practices of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami aftermath. The aftermath of Cyclone Nargis clearly points to the challenges of post-disaster technology deployment with military regimes / governments hugely resistant to foreign intervention and with technology deployments, like for example the localised Sahana instance, which problematically (and despite the best of intentions) relied on good will and good luck to actually get used meaningfully. This is not adequately addressed in this report.

Again, page 11 of the report notes that “The Sri Lankan telecommunications authority now insists that subscribers may only use SMS messaging during national emergencies, so as not to overburden the networks”. This is the first I’ve heard of this bizarre regulation and would like to know from the authors what exactly this means and how it can be technically enforced, especially since the footnote only points to an article on Sri Lanka’s use of SMS during the Boxing Day tsunami and another tsunami alert in 2007 which I’ve written about in much greater detail.

The report also makes a significantly impolitic assertion regarding Sri Lanka. In noting that “UNOSAT provided independent evidence that the Sri Lankan army had continued to shell civilians in no-fire zones despite claims by the government that military had ceased” on page 35, the authors callously ignore a statement made by the UN office in Colombo regarding this imagery (which was leaked) and its subsequent interpretation by media. While this is not in any way to suggest that this imagery must be wholly discounted as compelling documentation of tragic circumstances, we must hold the authors responsible for a significant lack of rigour and balance in researching what is even post-war a hugely contentious point. Seemingly endorsing, without question, satellite imagery that has been interpreted by some to suggest war crimes committed by the Sri Lanka State is a faux pas of no small measure.

Overall therefore, this report falls short of a standard we have come to expect of UNF / Vodafone Foundation reports, such as for example Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs based on a published survey methodology and genuinely interesting to read for its exposition of new and innovative ideas and initiatives.

As many have already suggested, the authors – one of whom, Patrick Meier, I consider currently one of the world’s foremost researchers on the use of ICTs for HA/DR/EW and DRR – must take the criticism of this report as an indication of how important this work is, and incorporate suggestions made here and elsewhere in perhaps a second edition which must follow anon, addressing concerns over definitions and research methodology, content selection and if the title remains the same, a far greater fidelity to the study of conflict and application of ICTs in it.

Emergency Information Service (EIS) by Thomson Reuters Foundation

The Thomson Reuters Foundation adds another acronym to the disaster response alphabet soup via its newly launched Emergency Information Service (EIS). As its press release notes,

Developed to respond to major natural disasters around the world, the new EIS will deploy expert Action-Units of journalists to scenes of major catastrophe where they will seek out, collate and disseminate life-saving information to disaster-struck populations, filling a critical gap in the chain of crisis information.

EIS Action-Units will be staffed by specialist humanitarian-trained Reuters journalists. Upon alert of a major natural disaster, the EIS Action-Units will travel to the affected area and use the most appropriate means of communication – particularly SMS text messages – to reach local populations, aid agencies and local-language media. Communities affected by disasters often find themselves cut off from information and aid. A key aim of the EIS is to ensure those affected are not seen merely as victims but as “first responders” who can help shape and manage the disaster recovery process through their own local knowledge and expertise.

Speaking at the launch, Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said: “In times of major natural catastrophes, information itself is aid, as crucial as shelter or blankets. Working with key partners such as the Red Cross, the EIS will have teams in the field within hours of a natural disaster striking. The EIS Action-Units will provide reliable, actionable information to help empower survivors to be architects of their own recovery.”

Thomson Reuters Foundation has developed groundbreaking technology to allow the EIS team and other groups to assimilate and process multiple information streams in an emergency. The tools let the EIS Action-Units generate information services for dissemination in local languages via SMS, email and web page. When all communications are down, the EIS will turn to low-tech means such as leaflets, community noticeboards and even megaphones.

The reason I’m interested in this initiative is because it is the first I know of that combines citizen journalism with the resources of a major international wire news agency to better equip victims of disasters to access information vital to aid and recovery.

The press release however is rather convoluted. Inter alia, it is not clear what EIS really is, what technologies are at play or how the EIS teams will be constituted and deployed. Further, on the one hand, the press release emphasises that EIS will “empower survivors to be architects of their own recovery.” On the other hand, the text notes that EIS will “seek out, collate and disseminate life-saving information to disaster-struck populations”. The thrust of the first points suggests that EIS is geared more towards the provisioning of tools and services for citizens to produce their own content, and access information on aid and relief. The emphasis of the second point seems to suggest that EIS is more of an information dissemination platform. Is EIS both? A question if EIS is to provide victims with the tools and resources they can use to produce and publish their own narratives is how the Thomson Reuters Foundation collaborates with the UN and other agencies, such as Telecoms sans Frontiers, in the provisioning of equipments, tools and services so as to avoid duplication and resource overlap.

Whereas the potential of EIS to empower those traditionally considered victims without agency after a disaster to produce and disseminate their own narratives is to be welcomed, much more needs to be made public about EIS before we can determine if this is mere gimmickry or an initiative more meaningful and worth supporting.

Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of hope

Of the plethora of content on the web dealing with the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and its aftermath, one of the latest comes from the Thomson Reuters Foundation called Surviving the Tsunami – Stories of Hope. Of the four stories on the site, framed by compelling photography, one is from a fellow Sri Lankan. This is the second multimedia initiative from Reuters I have featured on this blog. The first was Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War, an excellent visual narrative of war in all its visceral reality.

Initiatives such as this visualise interesting aspects of both the disaster and its aftermath. For example, Surviving the Tsunami – Stories of Hope clearly flags aid pledged for Sri Lanka for recovery, much more than the actual cost of recovery.

Actual cost of recovery

Aid pledged

It’s this discrepancy that has given rise to serious concerns of corruption and financial misappropriation five years after the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

I like initiatives of this nature not just because they are well done, but because they inspire others to create similar initiatives on the web to document and bear witness to events and processes important in their lives and contexts. With the power of the free Google Visualization API (which is tremendously powerful even in its present avatar), for example, and just a little technical know how, web initiatives no less compelling than those by Reuters can be created by anyone with a story to tell.

And the world is never short of stories untold.

Dialog Telekom’s false claims of HSPA+ at 28.8Mbps

I am not alone in being extremely concerned over Dialog Telekom’s reprehensible lies about its wireless broadband quality of service. Perhaps in response to Mobitel’s announcement earlier this month of HSPA+ wireless broadband trials, Dialog’s Darley Road office, amongst others, now sport banners suggesting that the company offers HSPA+ at 28.8Mbps.

The Daily Mirror report on the Mobitel HSPA+ trials notes that HSPA+ “… is capable of delivering downlink speeds of up to 28 Mbps.” Emphasis mine. On the other hand, Dialog’s posters and advertising explicitly mention HSPA+ speeds at 28.8Mbps. At used in this way denotes a particular point or segment on a scale. For example, driving at 50kmph means that you are not driving at 49kmph or 51kmph, or at an average of 30kmph. When Dialog promises HSPA+ at 28.8Mbps, this is precisely what a customer must then expect, all the time.

HSPA+ at 28.8Mbps?!

This is, unsurprisingly, not the case even in their trials currently showcased at their Darley Road office. Even on the two Dell laptops connected to their HSPA+ test signal, throughput at the time I was there never exceeded around 16.3Mbps (the laptop was using a download manager to get two large files, in separate locations, outside Dialog’s domain). Worse, the Dialog representative openly said that speeds of 28.8Mbps were not achievable in the real world. When I then pointed to the significant divide between what the Dialog poster propped next to us promised and what the customer would experience, the response I got was that upgrading the network to HSPA+ would benefit the entire customer base who would experience better throughput overall. The essential fallacy of the company’s advertising was simply not acknowledged. I also asked whether Dialog as part of its HSPA+ rollout, was going to guarantee a minimum throughput, to which the answer was no.

This is not the first time Dialog Telekom has attempted to beguile customers through misleading advertising. My own experience with the company in the past suggests marketing strategies significantly anchored to misinformation, tellingly acknowledged by its own employees.  Furthermore, independent think-tank Lirneasia has repeatedly exposed the great divide between promise and reality when it comes to wireless broadband from Sri Lankan telcos. My own office has three Dialog HSPA accounts and the network throughput on all of them even in metropolitan Colombo is pathetic. Repeated calls to Dialog were unable to resolve the pissant throughput that mirrors the experience of this blogger in 2008 and this blogger in 2009.

As Prof. Rohan Samarajiva from Lirneasia has noted in the past, “… all mobile operators [engage] in hype”. Rohan also avers that “UPTO is a weasel word. It is accurate even if all they give is 1 Kbps”. Significant user dissatisfaction with the blatant lies of leading Sri Lankan telcos are evident on the web. This endemic lying is not unique to Sri Lanka. Telcos in the United Kingdom were in 2008 found to be clearly at fault for deceiving customers over broadband speeds.

Yet given the absence of an Advertising Standards Authority in Sri Lanka that inter alia, holds telecoms companies responsible for misinformation, how can we ensure that the likes of Dialog Telekom and Mobitel are held accountable for the deception they continue to employ so blatantly?

Groundviews wins a Manthan South Asia Award

I’m pretty pleased that Groundviews was awarded a prestigious Manthan Award South Asia under the e-news category. The grand jury’s evaluation of the site noted, “What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It’s a new age media for a new Sri Lanka… Free media at it’s very best!”

This year, Groundviews was the only Sri Lankan initiative featured in the e-news category and also the first Sri Lankan initiative to win an award in this category. The site was also shortlisted in the e-news category in 2008.

This is the second prestigious international award for the site. In 2007, the year Groundviews was launched, it won an Award of Excellence in New Communications from Society for New Communications Research.

We hit 1,000 posts this year, and what I wrote on the site at the time bears repeating in light of the Manthan Award,

Over three years, Groundviews has borne witness to that which traditional print and electronic media did not, and for well-known reasons, could not. Post-war for example, our path-breaking coverage of the situation facing IDPs in Menik Farm was picked up and featured on leading domestic and international media, including the New York Times, Al Jazeera and the BBC. The wealth of debate and submissions online already makes Groundviewsunique as an online resource and platform for engaging discussion in Sri Lanka. We are globally recognised as an authoritative voice on Sri Lanka and were the first to feature a mobile version, and the first to leverage social networking platforms like Facebook and  Twitter.

At a conservative average word count per submission, we now feature well over one and a half million words on the site of original content. Recently, we hosted the world premiere of a short film on one of Sri Lanka’s least known communities of African origin. Banyan News Reporters, a series of satirical articles on key issues related to war, human rights and peace has generated a cult following, and is sui generis in Sri Lanka as an innovative way to flag issues of significant concern in cycles of violence.  Groundviewshas commissioned award winning Sri Lankan poets and dramatists to bear witness to violence. The site has also featured compelling and innovative photojournalism that explores, post-war, hope for a just and enduring peace amongst our citizens. A series of articles commemorating the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983 and the race riots of 1958, along with a series of short-form videos, remain invaluable resources for the student of conflict resolution and the discernible historian.

Over 160 authors have contributed to the 1,000 posts published on the site to date. There are over 9,300 comments to date generated by this original content, penned by from those as diverse as senior diplomats in governmentand retired civil servants to university students and those writing into online media for the first time in English. These comments alone feature nearly one million words. Framed by our progressive editorial guidelines, these comments are invaluable insights from citizens in Sri Lanka and from the diaspora unique to the site. For example, The Internment – A Collective Punishment? by Dr. Devanesan Nesiah has been read over twenty-four thousand times and mind-bogglingly generated well over sixty-thousand words of critical comments through over 140 responses to date.

Our 1000^th post is a significant milestone in a quest to define journalism as it should be in Sri Lanka, and a peace with dignity for all which we believe is so much more than the absence of war.

Keeping empathy alive: New media and storytelling on disasters

I delivered a presentation today at a workshop organized by South Asian Women in Media looking at media coverage of disasters. In the first part, heavily influenced by Nicholas Kristof’s Advice for Saving the World, I suggested story ideas and angles better able to generate and vitally, sustain, audience interest in disasters and their aftermath.

In the second part, I used my own experience in using new media to cover humanitarian disasters to flag new tools, platforms and techniques vital to journalists. I also noted how journalists could now avail themselves of a plethora of web and mobile based technologies to get, disseminate, archive information on and sustain interest in disasters and crises.

The presentation is available as a full colour, high resolution PDF here.

Visualizing a future President’s promises

As Sri Lanka heads into Presidential elections on 26th January 2010, we can expect both the incumbent Executive and former Army Commander Sarath Fosenka, the two leading candidates, make all manner of promises and statements through media interviews, speeches and their respective manifestos.

It’s tough to make sense of this tsunami of words. It is vital however for public interest journalism to bear witness, document and help citizenry understand the statements and promises made by those aspiring for the highest public office in the country.

Never done before in Sri Lankan journalism, I applied information visualization to analyze the key statements made by Sarath Fonseka to date. The resulting story is now on Groundviews – Visualising key speeches and submissions of Sarath Fonseka.

This is no different to what was done with Obama’s important speech recently, calling for changes in US policy and troop strength levels in Afghanistan.

Will mainstream print media follow suit and use visualizations to help voters understand the key policies and differences between the two leading candidates?

And in a country such as ours, if traditional media were to embrace these new models and tools for journalism (which are free to wit), would election campaigns be more open, accountable and responsive to voter demands? Would it be more difficult for candidates and the President elect to rescind or forget promises and statements? In seeing vital emphases, trends as well as silences through such visualizations, can citizens and journalists themselves ask better questions from candidates about their policies? Finally, how can institutions like the Sri Lankan College of Journalism embrace these new techniques in journalism, so that students passing out are not hostage to an archaic pedagogy and conception of journalism?

Intercepting mobile communications: A cogent case for truth-seeking and slow news?

Even if most of us are powerless to completely evade it completely, the pitfalls of mobile phone intercepts are well documented and known. However, two articles recently published on the web can be read as somewhat justifying the use of material thus collected for truth seeking after an act of terrorism. Whether such use justifies ab initio the clandestine harvesting of voice and data from consumers is a debatable point, particularly in regimes significantly less democratic than the US and India.

England’s Guardian newspaper reports on its blog an experiment by Wikileaks to place on public record more than 500,000 intercepted pager messages, many from US officials, at the time of the World Trade Centre attacks in New York on 9th September 2001.

The experiment by whistleblowing website Wikileaks includes pager messages sent on the day by officials in the Pentagon, the New York police and witnesses to the collapse of the twin towers. Wikileaks said the messages would show a “completely objective record of the defining moment of our time”.

Emphasis mine. In a similar vein, the Lede of the New York Times reports almost a year after the horrific terrorist attacks in Mumbai that,

… Channel 4 News in Britain had obtained and broadcast excerpts from those intercepted phone calls, between the attackers and people apparently directing them. This audio was also used in a documentary produced by Channel 4 and HBO, which was broadcast last summer in Britain is airing in the United States this week.

The Channel 4 video is chilling, demonstrating clearly how mobile phone communications were central to the terrorist attacks.

Distracted by wide screen monitors?

Implications for advocacy against mobile phone and communications monitoring
We know that the terrorists in Mumbai used Blackberry’s to communicate with home base and monitor news reports. Does this knowledge justify the Indian government’s threat to hack into Blackberry communications a few months before the attacks last year?

Both examples above point to extremely sophisticated, wide ranging signals and communications intelligence regimes in both countries, able to access the communications of specific mobile devices and numbers post facto. As noted in the Lede,

Wikileaks would not reveal the source for the leak, but hinted: “It is clear that the information comes from an organisation which has been intercepting and archiving US national telecommunciations since prior to 9/11.

This strongly suggests that both data and voice of a wide range of numbers (maybe even of all consumers?) are being recorded either by the telcos themselves and / or by government intelligence agencies.

Given the increasing sophisticated and ubiquity of signals and communications intelligence, it is reasonable to expect that every terrorist act today gives cause for more encroachment into private communications. For example, this is clear even in the United Kingdom, when in 2008 it was brought to light that it was the intention of the British Government to create a database to record every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by all citizens.

A common argument will be that these measures are necessary to protect the public in a context where terrorism relies on the same public infrastructure and communications channels to plans its attacks as ordinary citizens.

Will then a mark of democracy in the future be the open knowledge and contestation of these signals and communication intelligence regimes in the media by civil society, such as we find in the UK and US? If not, how can we discern between the ostensibly pro bono publico monitoring of communications in more robust democracies and the more sinister, parochial monitoring of communications in regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China?

A case for slow-news?
Finally, I go back to the justification of Wikileaks to publish the records of pager messages sent after the World Trade Centre attacks. What it refers to as an objective record is actually a plethora of hugely subjective, partial and inaccurate messages. Any real time analysis of these messages could not have in any meaningful way contributed to situational awareness or policy decisions. As the Guardian notes, the messages “…show how panic and rumour began to spread on the day, and are likely to fuel conspiracy theories about the attacks.”

Dan Gillmor, using the more recent example of the shootings in America’s Fort Hood, writes about the need for a ’slow news’ movement. As he notes,

I rely in large part on gut instincts when I make big decisions, but my gut only gives me good advice when I’ve immersed myself in the facts about things that are important. This applies, more than ever, to news, where we need to be skeptical of just about everything we read, listen to and watch, though not equally skeptical. A corollary to that is increasingly clear: to wait a bit, for evidence that is persuasive, before deciding what’s true and what’s not.

It comes down to this: The faster the news accelerates, the slower I’m inclined to believe anything I hear — and the harder I look for the coverage that pulls together the most facts with the most clarity about what’s known and what’s speculation. Call it slow news. Call it critical thinking. Call it anything you want. Give some thought to adopting it for at least some of your media consumption, and creation.

Dan’s full blog post, which refers to the work of Ethan Zuckerman as well, is linked to national security, in that policy decisions to counter terrorism taken on the basis of communications intelligence may be based on information that’s inaccurate, partial and in some cases, deliberately misleading. This is especially the case in a context where with a shocked and enraged citizenry, a government is forced to act upon, and rate more highly, intelligence it knows is suspect. There is also the flip side, where in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack known to have been coordinated using public telecoms infrastructure and channels, an unscrupulous government can more easily justify and embed communications monitoring for its own ends.

As Dan notes, the answer could lie in media literacy. But media literacy is pegged to the freedom of expression, sufficient literacy, education and access to alternative media. Fabrice Florin’s NewsTrust.net offers one compelling model of news reporting that fosters critical appreciation of online content. There are others. Coupled with an education in critical thinking, they can be a solid defense against mobs and riots instigated by disinformation, misinformation and misguided government policies that exacerbate conflict and act as a force-multiplier to terrorism.

Legal Assistance Network for Online Journalists

The Online Media Legal Network (OMLN) is a network of law firms, law school clinics, in-house counsel, and individual lawyers throughout the United States willing to provide pro bono legal assistance to qualifying online journalism ventures and other digital media creators.

As noted here,

The idea for OMLN came out of CMLP’s work over the last 3 years helping online journalists understand their legal rights and responsibilities. During this time period, we’ve published and updated our legal guide and legal threats database, blogged on topics of interest to online publishers, partnered with like-minded organizations on a variety of educational projects, and filed amicus briefs in cases with significant implications for online speech. While we are proud of the impact we’ve made and the success of the CMLP website, we also recognize that many online journalists and bloggers need more than generally applicable legal information—they need their own lawyers to tackle their own individualized legal issues.

There’s already an impressive array of law firms and legal clinics that are part of the initiative, and I’ve encouraged lawyers I know of in the US who are experts in Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) to consider signing up to this network.

The model of OMLN is a powerful idea that can be adapted for use in other countries as well. One significant challenge, if one were to think of adapting this for Sri Lanka, would be to find lawyers willing and able to take on pro bono cases for bloggers and online journalists.

In the past, I’ve called for the creation of a Sri Lankan Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) type outfit to monitor practices and policies of ISPs in Sri Lanka, using tools like “Switzerland”. It could mature into an entity that provided education on web security, undertook pro-rights / pro-consumer Public Interest Litigation and also provide bloggers with legal protection and advice.

With bloggers increasingly interrogating the status quo even when traditional print and electronic media cannot, or will not, the hate and harm directed against them will continue to grow. From growing plagiarism to the recognition of the rights of bloggers, from increasing censorship of online content to implications of such policies for bloggers, the need for bloggers to access legal help is not just limited to the US.