Upholding Public Trust Doctrine & Protecting Sovereign Sri Lanka’s Data & Intellectual Property
The Nation State system is what exists today. While there is a world body to ensure World Peace and is a podium where nations unite to discuss and debate international issues and find cohesion in a global community, a sovereign nation state is given freedom to rule its nation following globally accepted tenets but respecting individual nation’s cultural identities, heritage & history. This means internal affairs of a nation is left to the people’s representatives in governance to honor and uphold. Thus, the Public Trust doctrine means that the representatives voted for a term of office are only representing what the People want and these representatives are duty bound to ensure that the People’s Trust is not violated, manipulated, abused or ignored. A key facet of that is the need to protect the country’s assets and resources. In a world where human’s hunger for amassing wealth and power, the greedy have neglected to see that humans are not sole rulers or sole inhabitants of the Earth. Animals, flora and fauna are equal inhabitants sharing and living with humans. But, the craving for amassing wealth has resulted in destruction to forests, to resources and assets. This is causing major environmental catastrophe’s the world over. The newest craze is to acquire the data of countries and now technology has become master and the race to take over countries data and intellectual property has become the newest craze. Is Sri Lanka aware of these global dynamics.
Conquest by Computers
In formulating legislation, it is simply not enough to be aware of the subject matter or the law, what is actually more important is a global understanding of the dynamics at play.
Ever since man began to explore the world, and found new territories and nations, the explorers grabbed the land & resources even massacring the inhabitants. The rich nations of the world today are built on stolen wealth. Their massacres have not been accounted for and instead they pretend to be angels preaching to the world. What the colonial criminals could not do throughout the 500 years of plunder and murder, the same nations have tragically united again to continue making use of technology to once again take over nations electronically & rule over them without conquest.
Today, we are looking at conquest by computers and this was clearly evident in the Millennium Challenge Corporation Section 3.9 Intellectual Property clause requiring Sri Lanka to hand over all of its intellectual property to USA. The justification to objections in the wording was that it was merely standard wording. What if that standard wording is rolled out when all of the tenders are given to foreign firms or if Sri Lankan firms unknowingly outsources their contracts to a US firm. This means all passwords, backoffice, hardware, software will all belong to a foreign country and Sri Lanka would end up having to pay millions even to change a comma or a number. In a corrupt society, the technology thieves have only to bribe officials with commissions to take care of the necessary paperwork to make this theft possible.
With all technology under the rule of thumb of foreign companies or foreign governments, what use it it to be even singing the national anthem when Sri Lanka will only be celebrating a ceremonial ‘independence’.
Therefore, how much have those drawing up the legislation to protect Sri Lanka’s data thought of these global maneuverings and globalist plans to ensure choke points and precautions are taken to the advantage of Sri Lanka?
Taxpayers Intellectual Property belongs to the State
In the debate over intellectual property, it is important that Sri Lanka realizes that even a cent spent by the tax payer has to be regarded as an asset of the State. Therefore, anything that the tax payers money has been used for is intellectual property of the State. Legislation must clearly have this legally drawn up in wording and deed.
A person’s personal expense for innovation becomes that person’s personal intellectual property. However, any innovation or creation using the taxpayer’s money must remain intellectual property of the State and must be regarded as part and parcel of the Public Trust doctrine.
Sri Lanka began a Data Protection Act in 2019, has this taken stock of the above? Why is the data protection/intellectual property law/copy right laws getting delayed? The crux of the matter is whoever is drawing up the laws & legislations must ensure that they put the Country First, not justify their inability to do so by claiming such insertions would anger our neighbors or other countries. We seem to forget that other countries, drawing their laws ensure their country, their people and their data are protected from all others. What is our problem in doing the same? Or rather what prevents our people from wanting to do the same. Every time legislation is being drawn it is generally with the insular mind to not think of the wider repercussions and dangers from external sources but instead think of only scoring brownie points over the opposition. In so doing, Sri Lanka’s constitutional amendments have caused greater harm for the nation than any others. This mentality must stop. The mentality of protecting Sovereign Sri Lanka’s data, copyrights, intellectual property is more important than protecting Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity. Today, countries are not going to be wasting funding on sending militaries to take over nations like before. Today, unmanned planes and drones are doing the bombing and the spying and trade pacts, international agreements by powerful nations are craftily plugging initiatives where they will own and secure the back office and passwords for investments/loans/grants etc given to third world nations. Not only will nations be falling into debt/interest trap, if they do not look at the larger picture and take necessary precautions, they will soon find they are namesake political leaders where data ownership will lie with richer countries who will be ruling over the leaders and us like puppets.
We do not wish to be data conquered because of our own lethargy and political blindness.
Shenali D Waduge
