Sri Lanka has been issuing National Identity Cards (NICs) to its citizens for 45 years now, but the government’s recent push for an electronic version with biometrics is making privacy advocates uneasy about the extent of information the state wants in its database.
In February, the country’s Right to Information Act came into force, drawing praise for the government’s efforts to promote transparency. Six months later, the government presented to Parliament regulations for creating a central electronic database of citizens that officials with wide-ranging powers will be able to access.
Just as it appeared ready to part with more information through the RTI Act, the government was gearing up to demand more information from the people, through the Electronic-NIC, with family details and fingerprints as biometrics. For many within the government and outside, the E-NIC is merely an effort to “establish identity of Sri Lankan citizens using modern technology”, as the Department of Registration of Persons puts it. They see the initiative as neither an aberration nor a surprise, given the government’s known thrust on technology. This is a government that is talking about replacing school textbooks with tablets.
But for others, such a centrally-managed electronic database foretells serious risks around privacy and security. Observing that the authorities would have “virtually unrestricted access to any information concerning any citizen recorded with any public authority,” R. Ratnasabapathy of Advocata, a Colombo-based policy think tank, petitioned the Supreme Court after the government gazetted the new regulations in August. “Apart from threatening citizens’ right to privacy, such a database will enable mass surveillance,” he says.
Seen through a legal lens, the E-NIC coming into operation appears particularly dangerous in Sri Lankan jurisdiction as the country does not have a Data Protection Act, according to Samantha de Soysa, a lawyer working on privacy law. “This is a human right and Sri Lanka has clearly dismissed the importance of the violation of our data,” she argues.
While there are “obvious privacy concerns”, the initiative entails definite implications for journalists and human rights defenders, notes Raisa Wickrematunge, journalist and co-editor of Groundviews, a Colombo-based citizens journalism website. Political dissidents, activists and journalists in Sri Lanka are rather familiar with high surveillance under the Rajapaksa administration, during and after the war.
Violation of basic rights
Even this E-NIC project was really initiated in 2011, when Mr. Rajapaksa was in power. When the matter was debated in Parliament in 2014, a few lawmakers, including from the United National Party that is currently in power, raised concerns over the violation of citizens’ basic right to privacy. In less than three years, the successor UNP-led government that unseated Mr. Rajapaksa in 2015 is spearheading the project with zest.
As per the timeline given by the Commissioner General of the Department for Registration of Persons to local media, Sri Lanka will begin issuing electronic ID cards by the end of next year, after an extensive data collection drive. Amid apparent convergence across political party lines on the subject, the Frontline Socialist Party, a small left-wing party, is trying to raise its voice in opposition. “Whichever way you see it, the move ultimately strengthens the State security apparatus, not citizens’ democratic rights,” says Pubudu Jayagoda, the party’s education secretary. “It is undemocratic.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Meera Srinivasan
Quelle/Source: The Hindu, 15.10.2017
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