Social media coming under watch in Sri Lanka

The political arena is more in a transitional period in the country, the government is with the declining popularity, people within the government is talking against the government ( whether it’s real or not), government wondering to have a presidential or parliamentary election first, basically people are wondering how long the government and the president is going to keep up their popularity.

Making things worst for regular internet users, government is going to watch people’s online social media activity with the help of the country that is having the world’s worst censorship China.

According to the Ceylon today news the government is worried about people talking against the govenrment on Social Media leading to change in the government.

With the spread of cyber crime causing unrest in countries, Sri Lanka wishes to take precautions against such acts.

This means the usage of social media in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where social media played a large role in the change of government.

However this might be partly triggered by the recent social media camps in the country by the US embassy. The social media camps are brought in to talk because unlike other social media events where you get minute to minute updates on social networks, things that happen in the US embassy are done behind closed doors with no one blogging or openly talking about what happened in these events even after they are completed.

I talked with one of my friends when I asked about what happen inside these social media camps done by US embassy, the response was “what happens in these events stays in these events.”, and one thing that is known is that these events talk about activism and using social media in changing the government which must have been the reason behind government taking measures to monitor people’s online activities.

US embassy is also known to be sponsors of most social media events in the country, you can read more about these things in the blog post by @saptha, “Social media : A possible threat to national security in Sri Lanka”

Although I don’t like the US embassy hidden activities about social media, I don’t like government monitoring peoples’ social media activities like an unconstitutional country like China. And not to mention the invasion of privacy it’s going to have on thousands of people especially teens and young people in using social media.

And if there is a constitutional government change happening in the country then there should not be any restrictions on the use of social media in doing so. And I also don’t want to have an internet knowing that what you are doing is being watched.

And people should also worry about the things that might follow, like imprisoning of bloggers and online activists in countries like china, unauthorised hacking in to email accounts and websites, compulsory installation of key logging software on computers by all the people, restricted access to websites, censored search results on google. Just to keep the government going at the cost of people not having freedom on the internet.

People in China are actually experiencing these things, and I hope this won’t be the case in Sri Lanka, Internet should be free, uncensored, the best way to fight crooks and people with mal intentions online is by educating the public, not from censorship or invasion of online privacy.