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.

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.

From Bill Warters we learn of an excellent new initiative by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been actively developing a series of interactive Crisis Guides that help explain complex international conflicts and crisis quickly and engagingly.

The full series is available here.

The guides are beautifully produced, with compelling content and good narration. Each production is extremely well researched, and a list of resources referred to and used in the production are also available.

An invaluable resource for students of contemporary politics and world affairs, exemplifying the best use of multimedia technologies on the web to educate.

You know its bound to fail, but embracing the web and social networking in the manner WFP has needs to be recognised, celebrated and supported as best one can.

As reported in UN Dispatch, the World Food Program launched a new campaign, a billion for a billion. The idea is to link the 1 billion internet users around the world with the 1 billion who are chronically hungry.

WFP offers a plethora of ways through which you can raise awareness of the campaign and through it, the challenge of meeting the needs of those who are hungry around the world. WFP uses an array of social networking tools, and more traditional multimedia techniques in its campaign. At first, it almost looks like an overkill, but there’s something here for everyone interested in financially supporting WFP’s endeavour, or creating awareness on it through Facebook and Twitter.

Heck, there’s even an international short form film competition in collaboration with YouTube.

Though very rarely found in massive projects such as this, some form of independent after action review would be useful in ascertaining what technologies and methods worked the best, and what failed. In both cases, learning why can be immensely helpful in the design and implementation of similar initiatives in the future.

I wrote in April 2008 that,

“You know there’s something seriously wrong with e-gov when the humanitarian section of official website of the President of Sri Lanka has only a single mention of a human (though one wonders whether the person mentioned also fell into the animal welfare directives of the Mahinda Chintana)…. From the non-functional and dysfunctional to the blatantly racist, Sri Lanka’s so called e-gov framework is a mess that does not in any way hold government more responsive, accountable and transparent to citizens.”

Lankanewspapers ran a story on 5th November flagging enduring concerns regarding the use of Tamil on government websites. The low resolution image below, taken from the story, notes a number of problems – from the complete absence of Tamil on some website to the incorrect use of the language in others.

If we seek reconciliation after thirty years of war, the least we can do is to implement language policies on all government sites? Perhaps ICTA is too caught up in its own rhetoric and the wasteful production of outrageous music videos to care?

Moomeo is a relatively new site based on a powerful, simple idea. It creates a webpage out of any email sent to post@moomeo.com. This website comes with easy links to share it on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else on the web. Importantly, it does not show the sender of the email, ensuring that her / his identity is a secret. However, Moomeo does have a clear disclosure policy, which means that your identity can be revealed if you use an email that is tied to your name, or a well known online identity associated with you. So rule of thumb, if you are going to send a potential explosive email, it’s best to do it from an email that cannot be traced back to you.

This caveat aside, Moomeo is a tremendously easy way to get sensitive information out into the public domain. Sites likes Wikileaks also Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct, but can be daunting for non-technical users to add information on to quickly and securely. Moomeo has a distinct advantage in this regard.

An example of an email I penned to test the system, and instantly available online, can be viewed here. Moomeo’s platform allows for comments, comment subscription via email and RSS and integration with leading social networks.

Moomeo supports attachments, does not need registration, and is free.

Who in Sri Lanka use this first? And will this site also be banned or blocked if, for example, revelations related to war crimes make their way on to it?

Jude Mathurine from Rhodes University has an interesting presentation on the impact of mobile phone based use of social networks in Africa.

I’ve not yet come across a comparable study of new media’s use and impact in Sri Lanka, but the points on slides 3 and 7, noting that the Internet is still an elite medium in Africa, holds true here as well. Jude points to traditional media’s inability to grasp the potential of new media. Many examples of this can also be found in Sri Lanka, including for example this recent post of mine and the use of Wikipedia by the Sunday Times.

Jude’s more interesting submissions are in the slides that follow, looking at the growth of the mobile web in Africa and the use of SMS for citizen journalism. Mobiles in Sri Lanka are still used far more for entertainment and one-to-one communications than as a tool for participating in governance and public oversight. The participation in new forms of journalism through mobiles is not yet prevalent in Sri Lanka, where web access is still largely through PCs. Of late, several mobile phone companies have been running advertisements for mobile phone based Facebook access, but again, the potential of this for organising flash mobs, or even just the dissemination of information, is poor. Services such as JNW pioneered the use of SMS as a platform for the dissemination of news, but few NGOs have picked up freely available technologies like FrontlineSMS to aid their advocacy and outreach. Mainstream media in Sri Lanka remains locked into a PC dominated mindset at best – there is not a single traditional media site that is mobile phone friendly. LBO and Groundviews remain the only websites that render content automatically for mobile phone screens.

Jude’s conclusion that social media can be important space for public discourse on democratisation and development especially among youth is reflected in Sri Lanka as well, through existing examples such as Pissu Poona on Facebook and new forms of dissent online that emerged during and just after the end of war.

Best practices and potential for improved information flows in media and civil society is a field and desk research based report published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives I edited in December 2008 that looks closely at how civil society and NGOs in Sri Lanka can use traditional, alternative and new media techniques in their advocacy. Jude’s conclusions resonate widely and deeply in the recommendations proposed.

Ayubowan, a blog I didn’t know of before, helpfully posted a screen grab of a post from Gossip Lanka, a blog I also didn’t know of before, on the recent arrest of a ‘blogger’ in Sri Lanka that had many concerned. Gossip Lanka’s post is in Sinhala and doesn’t render at all on my Mac, which is why Ayubowan’s screen grab is helpful. The post avers in Sinhala that,

A few days ago, a derogatory email, also containing five nude photos, were sent to the Secretary of Defense and the President. Resulting CID investigations probed the IP address to ascertain the sender. It was discovered that the email was sent from a cybercafe in Matale. Based upon further investigations, the Police were able to apprehend the individual who was a regular customer of the cybercafe and owned the account used to send the email. However, the suspect vehemently denied he had sent the email in question. “This must have been done by someone to set me up” he said. The Police then asked who this could be. It was then the suspect said that his password was with his former girlfriend, who was not on good terms with him.

The Police then questioned the suspect’s girlfriend, who let known in her fear that she had given the password to her new boyfriend. She also told Police that her new boyfriend had set out to teach her old boyfriend a lesson.

Gayan Rajapakse is the name of her new boyfriend, and he admitted that he had sent the email. He will be in remand till the 6th under the instructions of the Matale District Courts.

This version is corroborated, also in Sinhala, by Web Alochana, an identity I read and trust. As Web Alochana notes, it is still not clear what the exact nature of the threat to the Defense Secretary and the President was.

It is not yet confirmed whether Gayan Rajapakse is a blogger, though he could still turn out to be one. His actions deservedly put him in the hands of the law and cannot be condoned. However, sending an email is emphatically not the same as publishing “offensive and defamatory comments regarding the President and the Secretary of Defense through a website he was operating”, which is what the Daily Mirror first reported and in turn gave rise to fears that a blogger had been arrested in the context of Sri Lanka’s atrocious media freedom. The Daily Mirror’s follow up story the day after also failed to mention that the suspect had been arrested over an email.

There has been to my knowledge no further reporting by the Daily Mirror on this incident. Leading Sri Lankan bloggers, justifiably alarmed, wrote a number of posts such as this one by Indi Samarajiva to find out more information on the incident that were also picked up by Global Voices Online. And it’s on comment threads on these posts, and on the blogosphere, that the incident was probed deeper and a more comprehensive account determined.

It’s an interesting model of crowd-sourcing a story, and one that the Daily Mirror and other traditional print media are well advised to study. The Guardian in England has already shown how this works to hold government accountable.

Exactly three years after its launch, Groundviews published its 1000th post today. In it Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu identifies the site with quality debate and asks citizens to use it to canvass their ideas for constitutional reform, governance, human rights and the economy and whatever else they see as constituting essential elements of an agenda for change and reform.

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 theNew York Times, Al Jazeera and the BBC. The wealth of debate and submissions online already makes Groundviews unique 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 sui generis in Sri Lanka as an innovative way to flag issues of significant concern in cycles of violence. Groundviews has 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 1000 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 government and 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 comments to date.

Our 1000th 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.

We invite you to join us.

The White House website has an interesting post on new disclosure policies that make available on the web, for the first time in history, all White House visitor records. Transparency like you’ve never seen before is a progressive record of transparency made possible by a forward thinking administration, strengthening and complementing existing Right to Information legislation.

Compare this with Sri Lanka’s proposed use of ICT at local and national government levels and lack of any Right to Information legislation.