Privacy: The New Fear
View(s):“H ang-genna beha, putho (you cannot hide son), Hang-genna beha,” Kussi Amma Sera was saying to her chatty neighbour Serapina. Both were in conversation under the giant mango tree in the garden on this bright Friday morning. What was this all about? Revelations by former Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera receiving a Rs. 1 million political campaign donation from Arjun Aloysius, prime suspect in the tainted Treasury Bond transactions which were followed by Minister and former army commander Sarath Fonseka also acknowledging that he got campaign donations from businessmen. When former Minister Ravi Karunanayake acknowledged that he was staying at a Colombo penthouse courtesy, again, Arjun Aloysius, this admission forced him out of office.
On a lighter note, searching the Internet, I came across a Wikepedia post titled ‘List of Sri Lankan mobsters’. It’s a veritable who’s who of the local mafia but what intrigued me most were the “aliases” of these gangsters like Gonawila Sunil, Soththi Upali, Kaduwela Wasantha, Baddegane Sanjeewa, Moratu Saman, Vambotta Nihal, Dematagoda Kamal, Kimbula-Ela Guna, Thel Bala, Prince Ayya and Wele Suda. But the most amusing ones that virtually takes the icing off the cake is Bamboo Suji, Anamalu Imtiaz and Paul Bada.
Don’t get me wrong. For decades politicians including some of the most honourable men and women in the Sri Lankan political space have benefited by largesse from big businessmen for their campaigns, in fact, to the extent of mafia dons funding campaigns. That’s no secret. The problem occurs only when such businessmen try to dip their fingers in the country’s national treasury or are involved in some heinous crime forcing those whom they had ‘backed’ to, literally speaking, cover their “backs”.
Today, in an age of good governance, transparency and accountability, these donations are coming under scrutiny so much so that there are strident calls for public accountability for campaign donations.
However, corporate sleaze pales into insignificance in this age of “Big brother is watching you”, meaning that everything you do, from the time you wake up and the time you go to bed (excluding the time you are asleep at night or day) is monitored. And that happens the moment you acquire a mobile phone, a computer and/or a smart-home device. Anything connected, anything wired.
Privacy is no more a choice of the individual. The wired world decides what is private and what is not and this fearful reality, this week, led to the introduction of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which is meant to ensure that personal data are not used for commercial or political reasons by the likes of Google, Facebook or Instagram.
To get a sense of how wired we are, by choice or without a choice, and how dangerous that could be, I once again search the Internet for data on mobile phones and came across these statistics:
- According to Sri Lanka’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the number of mobile telephone subscriptions (90 days) saw a phenomenal rise to 28.98 million (far more than Sri Lanka’s population simply because many people have two or three subscriptions) as at March 2018, compared to 11.8 million in 2008 and, 20 years ago, 174,202 in 1998. The number of fixed telephone lines on the other hand was 2.6 million in March 2018 from 3.5 million in 2008 and 523,529 in 1998.
- Here is an even more revealing statistic on how wired the world is: According to http://www.internetlivestats.com, the first billion Internet users was reached in 2005, the second billion in 2010 and the third billion in 2014. To give you a sense of the speed in which Internet users are increasing, as at 7.22 a.m. on Friday, June 1, the number of global emails was 3,933,321,270, and one second later more than 2.7 million emails had been sent. The number of Internet users in two seconds at this time had increased to 4 billion at the rate of more than 500 per second. Wow!
It’s Europe, and not the United States, that’s leading the way in bringing back an era where privacy was an individual’s choice and not someone else’s domain. This wake-up call is also a reminder of the future where robots and Artificial Intelligence will rule even the air we breathe, if we are not careful enough to ensure humans press the button of progress and not some machine.
In the days leading to the May 25 promulgation of the GDPR, many Internet users have received requests from different websites on the use of their personal data and permission to do so.
Information flows through the Internet or other wired platforms are gigantic and contains all our personal information which is often bundled and sold as data to companies. Facebook is currently facing serious allegations of selling data not only to feed corporate greed but also for politicians to win elections. In a conversation a year ago, a former schoolmate who recently retired from a US IT multinational explained how data can be collected on your likes, dislikes, where you frequently visit, whom you frequently see, your food preferences, etc, etc. Such information is packaged and could be offered for corporate use.
The now-in-focus GDPR aims to ensure users know, understand and consent to the data collected about them. “Under GDPR, pages of fine print won’t suffice. Neither will it force users to click yes in order to sign up,” according to one explanation. The May 25-enforced GDPR shifts the control of data to the consumer and protects the individual’s right on how his or her data can be used in the public domain.
My attention to the issue of privacy was also drawn by a recent report titled ‘Beware of marketing campaigns seeking your mobile number’ in the Business Times which quoted a data security specialist as saying that many who receive SMSs from corporates do not have any inkling from where they got the number or from or who sends them especially during marketing promotional campaigns.
“From where did they obtain mobile numbers to send such messages has become a puzzle to its recipients,” according to Manish Sehgal from Deloitte – India/Asian subcontinent, delivering a lecture in Colombo on ‘Cyber Security’. He said: “When an individual provides data to a corporation, he assumes that the corporate will be the sole custodian of such data and the data will not be misused at any cost. However, the consumer community is now losing faith in corporate bodies. When somebody engaged in a marketing campaign asks for my mobile number I am a bit apprehensive because I do not know for what purpose my mobile number will be used or to whom it will be sold for an illegal purpose.”
As if reading my thoughts on privacy, Kussi Amma Sera literally crashes into my privacy while bringing the cup of morning tea. “Mahattaya, mokak-de wenne Internet crash wunoth, lights nathnum? Ehe num apey thorathuru valaṭa mokada venne? (Sir, what happens if the Internet crashes, if there is a crash in the global power systems?
What will happen to our personal information on the Internet?),” she asks
With the future riding on humanoids, KAS has a point. If the worldwide web or Internet crashes, despite all the advances in IT protection, probably a lot of data will get lost and this could lead to war and disease, according to the late Prof. Stephen Hawking. Indeed, a frightful futuristic scenario. In this context, the GDPR is a welcome regulation and needs to be replicated across the world including Sri Lanka to ensure one’s privacy, by choice, is not violated.