Amateur Government and their crooked ways: Forcing a digital panopticon upon the Mauritian netizens.

It is a fact that the internet is in constant disruption, ergo, it now exists a huge cloud of a plethora of digital footprints which is known as Big Data. I have always been intrigued by big data and in the layman’s term, it signifies a bulk of information, obtained from individuals’ digital trail that is computationally analysed to associate patterns and trends, relating to our behaviour and interactions.

It must have occurred to any netizen to google or even talk about something and experience a shift in what the internet pops at us. While it can be agreed that if used smartly, big data can be the 21st century’s ultimate facilitator for businesses as well as governments, but I live in Mauritius and the intention that my government has on big data threatens my privacy, independence and freedom of speech.

Many people may contest and say that Facebook has already breached its users privacy but Facebook is not trying to shun me into being a mute sheep (that is a topic for another time). What we are witnessing today in Mauritius is a despotic Government aiming to monitor and control all its netizens through ICTA’s consultation paper whereby it states the deployment of a new technical toolset in order to decrypt the “https” traffic between a local user’s Internet device and a Facebook webpage. Moreover, this toolset will ultimately intercept traffic, decrypt it, archive it and then inspect/block its content (as and when required).

Of course, for this to come to life, the Government will set up a committee of people, who they will nominate, out of their common practice of nepotism to virtually surveil us; a digital panopticon if you will.

While the World Development Report 2021 is titled: Data for Better Lives with high committee people coming together to put intellectualism and innovation to good use, here lies Mauritius with a flawed e-government system which is intent on getting into our emails, messenger, WhatsApp and whatnot with their “NEW TOOLSET”.

Data for better lives entails the innovation of healthcare, education as well as a service to climate change and how to use data to reduce carbon emission through monitoring. That is the kind of monitoring that any government should aim at perfecting! Not my sarcastic, time kill conversations on whichever platform!

Estonia has developed during its first week of lockdown a user friendly e-health card to better assist its people with the motivation of ensuring proper organisation for the vaccination campaign. In Mauritius, we are ignorant of how the population’s money is being used. Take informed decisions for the betterment of the country and not decisions that will help you conceal your sharp practices!

Cheers.