8/21/22, 8:40 PM Myanmar’s Military Deploys Digital Arsenal of Repression in Crackdown - The New York Times A closed-circuit surveillance camera atop a building in Yangon. The New York Times One particularly large section of the budget allocations covers the latest ware for phone-cracking and computer-hacking. Those systems are usually designed for use by militaries and police forces, and many international export bans include such technology. The 2020-2021 Ministry of Home Affairs budget allocations include units from MSAB, a Swedish company that supplies forensic data tools for militaries around the world. These MSAB field units can download the contents of mobile devices and recover deleted items, according to notations in the budget. Henrik Tjernberg, the chairman of MSAB, said that some of the company’s “legacy technology” had ended up in Myanmar a few years ago, but it no longer sold equipment there because of a European Union export ban on dual-use products that can be used for domestic repression. Mr. Tjernberg did not answer questions about how his products ended up in the latest budget. U Thein Tan, another member of the parliamentary budget committee, said that fellow lawmakers felt uncomfortable with all the spyware in the budgets but that questioning anything to do with the security services was taboo for civilian politicians. “To be honest, we did suspect that they were using the technological devices for bad purposes, like surveillance of the people,” said Mr. Thein Tan. “But the problem is we don’t know what kind of technological devices these would be because we lack knowledge of the technology.” International scrutiny has made a difference. Last year, MSAB and Cellebrite, among other Western cyber-surveillance firms, pulled out of Hong Kong, where the police used phone hacking technology to monitor democracy activists. In Myanmar, the latest budget also included MacQuisition forensic software designed to extract and collect data from Apple computers. The software is made by BlackBag Technologies, an American company that was bought last year by Cellebrite of Israel. Both companies also make other sophisticated tools to infiltrate locked or encrypted devices and suck out their data, including location-tracking information. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/asia/myanmar-coup-military-surveillance.html 3/7