Feedback on Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in Sri Lanka

A week ago, the Ministry of Technology (MoT) released a draft strategy for AI in Sri Lanka, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to ostensibly “to leverage AI technologies to drive innovation, economic growth and societal progress across the nation”[1]. In my capacity as Research Director at The Disinformation Project based in New …

The proscription of Terrorgram in the UK: Implications for New Zealand

The United Kingdom proscribed the Terrorgram collective on 22 April 2024. It's the first country in the world to do so. As the official announcement noted, The UK is to become the first country in the world to proscribe the Terrorgram collective after a draft proscription order has been laid against the group in Parliament …

Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act (OSA): The government’s lies, falsehoods, & deception

Musāvādā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi - "I will abstain from false speech." (The fourth precept from the cardinal Five Precepts, or pañcasīla, of Buddhism) If only because of all the perennial, public, and performative motions of Sri Lanka's polity being led by Buddhism's core values, the government's outright lies around just the Online Safety Act (OSA) …

Ad tech’s and Meta Pixel’s rapacious reach: The curious case of New Zealand

A tweet by Pat Walshe (Privacy Matters) 🐾 alerted me to an article published in The Register, noting that 96% of US hospital websites share visitor info with Meta, Google, data brokers. Everything mentioned in the article adds to research I've led on the use of ad tracking tech - especially Facebook (or more accurately, …

The American Privacy Rights Act of 2024 (APRA) & Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act (OSA)

Some quick thoughts, inspired Asela Waidyalankara's tweet noting "Potential regulatory impact on BPO/KPO organisation (sic) operating in Sri Lanka" based on the proposed American Privacy Rights Act of 2024 (APRA). Prima facie, the lack of affirmative data minimisation, strict retention limits, disposal obligations, and transparency requirements in the Online Safety Act (OSA) are at significant …

The OSA’s first application as red flag

A news report on the first case using the Online Safety Act's (OSA) provisions is cause both for concern, and realises umpteen warnings around how application will be very far removed from how the Bill was benignly presented by those in government - as a legislative measure or means to protect women, and children. The …

Generative AI, and Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act

My work at The Disinformation Project in New Zealand has since the last quarter of 2022 led me to conduct significant, and sustained research into the adoption, adaptation, and application of generative AI models, and methods in the domain of information integrity, truth decay, and disinformation. Put another way, I’ve experimented with hundreds of generative …

Social media weaponisation in elections: The UK, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand

In August 2020, I wrote in to a technical consultation in the United Kingdom looking at digital imprints in the context of election campaigns. As Chloe Smith MP, the then Minister of State for the Constitution and Devolution noted in the Foreword to the consultation's brief, ...there is growing concern about the transparency of the …

People, protests, and tech

Very late to this watch party, but after three months discovered a programme I did with renowned journalist Hari Sreenivasan's YouTube series, 'Take on Fake'. https://youtu.be/X3ZhlDVC09E?si=BXXaf5xp2A8N5gHP Hari's a journalist I admire hugely, and followed for well over a decade. It was an absolute treat to finally speak with him. We talked a lot, and in …

Reflection, refraction, and rebuttal: Data signatures of the March 2019 Christchurch massacre on Twitter

For PhD, studied 819,813 tweets, & around 14 million words in them produced after March 2019's Christchurch massacre. Immediately evident is how Twitter today is unrecognisable from what the platform was then, & especially around discourse framing an unprecedented act of terrorism in New Zealand.  Screenshot Access it here as a PDF. I've included the …