This one is really hard to explain without expletives, but here goes.
The Sri Lankan state wants citizens to register online on a website for their own security. Super idea, never mind that the Sri Lankan State is about as illiberal and undemocratic as they get today.
Undeterred and in the interests of ‘national security’, the boffins at the Ministry of Defence, in line with the Mahinda Chintanaya, went back to the drawing boards and released the new and improved Version 2.0.
Unfortunately, if you use Firefox, you can’t even log into the site. Try it.
Lo and behold, the reason for the barred entry was evident.
Under the Mahinda Chintanaya, the boffins at the MoD have taken a wholly endogenous approach to security certificates, signing them with completely generic information that is guaranteed to be only accepted by MoD and Police data entry operators trained to bypass security that keeps ordinary, law abiding citizens out of the system.
The mind struggles to comprehend what the MoD and Police were thinking when they deployed this system, for the second time, in such a manner. Then again, maybe they weren’t thinking, since the Mahinda Chintanaya does not require this and frowns down upon too much of it in government.
An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance.
I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002.
I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents.
Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs.
Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts.
I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.
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6 thoughts on “Citizens.lk introduces state of the art security to Sri Lanka”
FireFox asked a few questions about the lose certificate. but one can negotiate his/her way through to the registration form.
it worked on my iMate running an old(er) version of Windows Mobile. and it works on IE.
what i don’t understand is this: the grama niladhari (GN) has information about citizens under his/her GN division. for example he/she visits every single household during elections – to collect voter information. so MoD can easily get the GNs to give all the information they require.
also, someone has to validate the data entered by citizens.
Well Guys, I think they had some cash left out from some budget, which couldn’t be spent on anything else because of its budget line. So they decided to have a website to collect info of citizens and use it for defense purposes. The issue was they didn’t have enough cash to get the security certificate sorted.. coz they them selves pocketed the cash:) he he 🙂 lol:)
Look, I don’t think they do not know all about the security certificates and all this minor details. They already have a 100 and one other government sites on defense info itself. I an sure this is some sort of a trap to get hold of the activist who criticize the regime.
I am sure they have all the resources to track down who visits citizens.lk and comments and writes about it. They might be even seing this conversation on your blog.
I am so sure that the buggers at the Defense Secretariat and the President’s office are dumb asses like we think…
Anyways, I am really really sorry to see all these and I feel sorry for the way Lanka is heading.
ICT for Peacebuilding (#ICT4Peace) 
ROFL!
And how dare they use my name in vain!
LOl 🙂 I feel so much more “secure” now. Thanks Sanjana for opening our eyes. Long live the “Rajapakse Troika”!!! 🙂
interpid? typo?
sloppy with their certificates – i agree; not signed by a ‘trusted’ site, like verisign.
one can bypass the certificate business and get to the registration form.
since i can’t post screen shots i’ll copy paste a curl http(s) response:
xenon:~ x$ curl https://www.citizens.lk/register -k
Register with Citizens.lk
—-
FireFox asked a few questions about the lose certificate. but one can negotiate his/her way through to the registration form.
it worked on my iMate running an old(er) version of Windows Mobile. and it works on IE.
what i don’t understand is this: the grama niladhari (GN) has information about citizens under his/her GN division. for example he/she visits every single household during elections – to collect voter information. so MoD can easily get the GNs to give all the information they require.
also, someone has to validate the data entered by citizens.
‘cos there can be typos
:p
Well Guys, I think they had some cash left out from some budget, which couldn’t be spent on anything else because of its budget line. So they decided to have a website to collect info of citizens and use it for defense purposes. The issue was they didn’t have enough cash to get the security certificate sorted.. coz they them selves pocketed the cash:) he he 🙂 lol:)
Look, I don’t think they do not know all about the security certificates and all this minor details. They already have a 100 and one other government sites on defense info itself. I an sure this is some sort of a trap to get hold of the activist who criticize the regime.
I am sure they have all the resources to track down who visits citizens.lk and comments and writes about it. They might be even seing this conversation on your blog.
I am so sure that the buggers at the Defense Secretariat and the President’s office are dumb asses like we think…
Anyways, I am really really sorry to see all these and I feel sorry for the way Lanka is heading.