8/21/22, 8:40 PM Myanmar’s Military Deploys Digital Arsenal of Repression in Crackdown - The New York Times Kyaw Soe Oo, one of two Reuters journalists imprisoned for reporting on a Rohingya massacre, arriving at trial in 2018. Court documents show that police used Cellebrite technology to collect data from the reporters’ phones. Ye Aung Thu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In many instances, governments do not buy military-grade technology directly from the companies that make them but instead go through middlemen. The intermediaries often cloak their intentions behind business registrations for education, construction or technology companies, even as they post photographs on social media of foreign weaponry or signing ceremonies with generals. Middlemen can give Western companies distance from dealing face-to-face with dictators. But international embargoes and dual-use bans still hold tech firms liable for the end users of their products, even if resellers make the deals. One of the most prominent surveillance technology middlemen in Myanmar is Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun, a Myanmar national who studied at a Russian university and Myanmar’s Defense Services Technological Academy, the military’s elite training ground. Many of the top employees at MySpace International and other firms he founded share the same educational pedigree. His connections were extensive. At defense procurement fairs, Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun showed off Western spyware to crowds of men in uniform, and he boasted on social media about hosting an American defense manufacturer in Myanmar. MySpace International is listed on the website of a Czech defense and laboratory equipment maker as a “partner.” Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s wife is the daughter of a high-ranking Tatmadaw officer who served as ambassador to Russia. She is named as the Myanmar agent for a Russian stun gun maker. The two people with knowledge of police procurements said that Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s companies supply most of the imported Western surveillance technology for the Myanmar police. A list of successful recent tenders from the Ministry of Home Affairs includes MySpace International, and the company’s website had the Ministry of Defense among its clients. The website also had a section on digital forensic technology that cited MSAB, BlackBag and Cellebrite among its “main suppliers,” with extensive descriptions of each firm’s offerings. Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun declined to speak with The Times. “We are not a big company,” said Ko Tet Toe Lynn, the assistant general manager for MySpace International. He would not answer questions about what products the company resells, saying there were too many to remember. Cellebrite said that neither it nor BlackBag was “affiliated” with four of Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s companies, including MySpace International. The Israeli firm did not say who its reseller in Myanmar was. The day after The Times posed extensive questions about the relationship between MySpace International and Cellebrite, the entire MySpace International website was taken down. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/asia/myanmar-coup-military-surveillance.html 5/7