Information and Power – citizens.lk
Gotabaya Rajapakse, a former Unix Systems Admin strangely enough, has leveraged the Internet pretty well. One story which has slipped under the rug during these news heavy weeks is his department’s call for an online registry of citizens (citizens.lk). I’m not sure of the legality of this. It’s a pretty wide ranging and intrusive government measure and it was enacted without any Parliamentary or other debate, by an unelected official. It’s only saving grace is that it’s pretty much impossible for everyone in this country to register online as there are probably only about 3-400,000 people with proper Internet. Honestly, if they could simply get every Sri Lankan to connect to the Internet (even in this draconian way) that would be cool. But as it is this will probably go the way of the Internet porn ban. Straight out of the realm of fiction, into farce.
The scary thing about citizens.lk is the racial part. There’s a clear dropdown for race. In most US government and professional situations identifying your race is voluntary. Here I presume it is not. Race is a sensitive issue in any country, but in Sri Lanka, with its unresolved and untended ethnic problem this is more so. Furthermore, I wonder what half Sinhalese/Tamils (Ligers, or Tions) are supposed to do.
It’s also a bit weird how aggressively the Ministry of Defence wields information as power. From shutting down TamilNet, radio stations etc to the Law and Order climate where presses are burned (Leader), TV stations are torched (Sirasa) and journalists shot (Lasantha, etc) – the environment is such that opposing views are pretty well silenced. Furthermore, Gotabaya just yesterday was calling various journalists terrorists on national TV, by name. Into this void he’s launched defence.lk and skillfully used SMS news (like the main Derana) to ration out war news like short eats.
Citizens.lk is the logical extension of checkpoints into digital space. I find it curious that they don’t digitize their own records first, and I don’t see how they can enforce this. Perhaps it’ll be like the drunk driving checkpoints where the cops get you to drive yourself to the station – because they don’t have vehicles of their own. There’s a field for emailing your local OIC. I have seen a only few computers in cop sheds and they’re generally not plugged in.
I’m not taking this especially seriously because it’s technically impossible. Sri Lanka is not a country where the masses are on the Internet. However, with Gotabaya what you have to watch for is intent. He’s floated lead balloons like that memo stating that no one could report on defence procurement or the war at all. Which was never passed. However, there certainly is a climate of violence and terror around media such that he got what he wanted. Coincidentally.
I guess what he wants with an online citizenship database is information, which presumably helps one capture terrorists. Or at least suspects. Or to find anyone you want at all quickly. Which is power. Might be that. It’s a stunning power grab, if it weren’t thankfully clutching at air. The intention is chilling though.
I am, however, impressed that the thing is written in PHP, and uses AJAX. I wonder if Big Brother 2.0 is using MySQL as well.
Posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 in GoSL, Human Rights, Law, Security, Sri Lanka, terrorism.
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malays who are muslims? now they are the lucky ones..they can use either malay or muslim??! its pathetic that a government doesnt have sccurate means of classifying its own people!
Wow is this Legal? And this is not even running encryption from browser to the server. What if someone does a DNS Spoof or Man in the Middle Attack where he can grab lot of information.
Dumb Dumb Dumb!
Oh yeah, it seems totally unencrypted. It should really be https at least, or offer some sort of VeriSign certificate.
since the site is not showing any data………i mean like listing or search fascility……….encryption is not really needed……….i think
Not Really… Encryption is important to such sensitive data to ensure no one will sniff into the connection while people are submitting the details.
Indi, genarally government has the right to acess our data………why are u so nagative about this………Developed countries have all of their citizens data digitized……..so they can acess them fast……..Why not us…….may be its not practical right now but in the future most people in srilanka will have acess to internet(in another 5 to 10 years time)…….think about the mobile…….virtually everybody owns a mobile these days………with the development of mobile internet it is possible…………don’t bring racism in to this, government should have information about it people withn their reach………sometimes our people are so nagative……..its time to change,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Government has no inherent right to access our data.
And no, many developed countries don’t even have national IDs
There is a thing called the Social Security Number in the US which basically does what the NIC does if needed. There should be some form of tracking available. Wiki has a write up.
I think this is a good thing though currently it is ‘clutching air’. Atleast it will help the voting and prevent one person from having two votes.
Race thing should be dropped though.
I think the race thing is the whole point of the exercise.
hey I resent tht!! i dont trust tht site and i dont think others should as well.. u never know what they can do with information like that.. oh and aufidius mate… Malay or Muslims… mate Muslim is not a race man…. its just called to people who follow the religion be them sinhalese, tamils, burgher, malays, moors and trust me there are people of those races who follow the religion… i hate it when people ask me what race i am and i say malay and then they ask so arent u muslim which is so wrong.. they refer to moors as muslim which is so wrong… hope that cleared your doubt. =D
for e.g. sinhalese there are christians and buddhists yeah? so its the same here..
@Findrod : cheers mate, I know..i actually blogged about it, check the following link..
what i was saying was that, what does a malay person put in there? he is both a malay, AND a muslim, what these fellows seem not to understand that “muslims” are an ideological group and not an ethnic group, as my post above reflects.
cheers anyway mate!
I _wonder_ why it gives you your IP and says, in bold at that, “Your login details are monitored”. Oh no, They know I say this site! I’d better register myself quickly before they think I’m a terrorist.
Site uses AJAX?? no way.. Otherwise why there is this message?
“Please enter the NUMBER of occupants in your household and submit the details of Chief Occupant on this page.
Registration forms for OTHER occupants will follow after submission of this page.”
Isn’t it stupid to create such a form.. If this page uses AJAX, isn’t there an easy way to do this..
Looking at it I can’t see at a glance where it uses Ajax, but I checked the source and there’s http://www.citizens.lk/js/ajax-scripts.js. Looks like it checks the NIC for validity, maybe other stuff.
If this was compulsory for all citizens, I can at least be satisfied about the legality of it — but they say it’s only compulsory for the Western Province. I can’t think that they can have a law just for one province — we’re not federal yet.
Someone I know involved in security technology said facial recognition software is already being used in some U.S. airports. Big brother is watching us whether we like it or not. But I’m not going to make it easier for them to watch me by filling this shit out.
When the 1983 pogrom happened, the government thugs had voter lists with them to discern the Tamil houses. This registration makes it even easier (and of course it is a more updated list). Anyone tried filling up a bogus one: first name: Ammata; surname: hukanna etc…?
As the wise Barney of Chalk World once said. “Knowledge is power, power is pain. If you don’t understand, I won’t try to explain.” (:
Yes, your comments on Malay and Muslim are true. It’s really weird to put Malays and Muslims into separate categories. We have lots of minorities in Sri Lanka like the Memonis, Borahs in addition to the Malays and the Moors – the Tamil-speaking Muslims who follow Islam. Besides that, what about the Parsis? It should be optional to fill a form with your race in it. All the same, this method of asking every citizen to register is rather difficult because so many rural communities don’t have access to internet. In addition to that, how can a mere database govern how best to classify the citizens of our country. It’s rather ridiculous. Oops – sorry Gotabaya, I do represent the government. Gosh! I so didn’t know he was a former Unix Systems Admin!
So today this cop from Mt Lavinia turns up with the forms that require all the occupants of the residence to fill in their details. He also had a hand-drawn map of the neighbourhood. Since I’ve just moved back to my parents place, he was particularly keen on my info. Photocopies of my ID were handed over and I had to fill in my name, ID number and age (guess he couldn’t believe a bugger my age was living with his parents) — no race details. He then wanted to know how long I was gonna stay with my parents. My mother seemed pretty keen to know the answer to that one too, and my reply that I wanted to leave ASAP didn’t satisfy him. So he suggested six months would be an OK timeframe, and my mother agreed, and he instructed me that I had to INFORM THE POLICE BEFORE I MOVED OUT!! What the fuck, over?
Now my point is, if they already have all this info, why can’t they just have that entered into a secure database that doesn’t require citizens to do it themselves?
Don’t mean to add my paranoid perspective to this. But in 83 voters list was used to identify Tamil homes/shops to be attacked. Perhaps the govt is looking for a more efficient way to let the OIC know where to go…
its a good tool sona, we need to find out who the tamils are and where they are residing.
Next time around we don’t need voting list like 1983, we just need to run a sql report on this databse and give the printout to the descendants of the valiant forces of mother country.
Don’t you want to be saved from the mother fucking terrorists from north and have a galss of lion beer watching the rugby matches in colombo.
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