A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, August 13, 2017
'Illiterate' people making 'false' allegations against AG’s Dept: ASG Kodagoda
2017-08-12 07
Answering allegations levelled against the Attorney General’s Department
as to how it examined 8,600 pages data retrieved from Arjun Aloysius’
mobile phone within two days, Additional Solicitor General Yasantha
Kodagoda PC said yesterday “some illiterate people” were making baseless
allegations, because in the retrieval process, the experts had
converted the data to a “PDF” file and using its search engine the
relevant details could be found easily.
In a special statement to the PCoI, ASG Kodagoda explained the process
adopted by the experts in retrieving the data from Mr. Aloysius' mobile
phone.
He said when transferring the extracted data to a computer using a
particular medium by experts, the data is then converted to a searchable
and conventional PDF document which contained 8,600 pages.
He said that process of extracting, converting and downloading was done within eight hours.
The ASG said subsequently that PDF was searched by both the experts and
the Counsel of the Attorney General’s Department for the purpose of
identifying certain details.
“That is how 8,600 pages were scanned and details found within 48 hours.
Not because I am a genius who could go through all those pages,
obviously, illiterate people would think so, but literate people will
know that it was done using the search engine of the PDF file”, ASG
Kodagoda said.
He said he was of the view that it was the method they had used in
gathering certain details which were submitted in 26 pages to the
Commission when Minister Ravi Karunanayake was testifying
When Justice Prasanna Jayawardena wanted to clarify the fact that
whether the PDF file could be altered or changed at some point during
the extraction process, ASG Kodagoda said the PDF that was received by
them was an uneditable document.
“Kodagoda can’t fabricate messages in Aloysius’ phone, and that has to
be clarified, because some illiterate people are making false
allegations, which only reflects the level of their literacy,” the ASG
said.
When Justice Jayawardena said the Commission was not concerned about
such outside comments, the ASG said, “No those comments matter because
we are here to assist the commission only.”
ASG Kodagoda was of the view that it was about safeguarding his professional reputation from “illiterate comments”.
Senior Counsel Chanaka de Silva appearing for Arjun Mahendran said those
submissions might or might not have been made elsewhere, hence, there
was no necessity to be dealing with them at the commission.
The ASG however disagreeing with the counsel’s stance said he needed to
be concerned about such comments because the Commission is the only
forum in which he has to speak.
However, he also told the Commission that the method used in retrieving
data from mobile phones would not be used for the laptops and computers
because it was impossible to do so.
The ASG said there would be a cloned copy (copy of every data) stored in
the hardware of such laptop devices after the extraction and therefore
it would not allow to have a single PDF file of the material extracted
from them.
He said they would have a mirror image of that cloned copy of the
hardware for the investigations and they would do whatever was possible
to retrieve the deleted data as well.
When questioned, the ASG said those extracted data would be available as
a form of replication which was readable and he said the data could be
copied to an external drive and given to the Counsel appearing for the
individuals under investigation, on the assurance of protecting their
privacy. (Shehan Chamika Silva)