communications harvested without judicial oversight, creating digital fingerprints that the regime could exploit to target critics and minority‐group members. Deep Packet Inspection and VPN blocks The military directed telecoms operators to install Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) sourced from Chinese vendors. Once activated, DPI identifies and throttles unencrypted and encrypted traffic, making secure messaging apps (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp) and virtual private networks (VPNs) effectively unusable for most users. In May 2024, the military used DPI to turn on a VPN block, establishing the “Great Firewall of Myanmar”. Within the first few months, the new system blocked roughly four million social‐ media interactions and causing more than 300 major Facebook pages to lose about 30 per cent of their engagement. This technical blockade violated the right of every user to access the internet freely. But it also had a distinctly discriminatory impact. Ethnic‐minority communities, such as in Chin, Kachin, and Rakhine States—already isolated by geography—relied heavily on VPNs to communicate securely with relief agencies or human rights monitors. The VPN ban cut these channels, leaving minorities unable to coordinate medical evacuations or document atrocity crimes. In Myanmar, there are concerns that DPI filters are configured to impede encrypted communications in specific areas dominated by ethnic minorities and communities that support the movement opposing the military, while leaving regime‐approved content unobstructed. In contrast, regime‐aligned elites in major cities often use technology and digital knowledge to circumvent DPI. That digital isolation deepened existing inequalities, as rural and minority populations became uniquely vulnerable to surveillance and reprisal. AI‐enabled facial recognition Under its “Safe City” initiative, the military has installed CCTV cameras in Yangon, Mandalay, and other urban centres. Chinese firms such as Huawei supplied video analytics technology capable of identifying individuals by matching live footage against mugshots in military police databases. Within months of installation, there were allegations that individuals from ethnic minority groups were being flagged by these CCTV cameras based on their clothing, and subsequently detained without charge, held incommunicado for weeks. The PSMS face‐matching platform deployed at checkpoints, hotels, and other transit points nationwide may also be used to intentionally identify those who lack valid ID, such as Rohingya and other stateless individuals. By integrating facial recognition, digital ID, and AI, PSMS effectively automates the targeting of vulnerable populations. There are also concerns that the AI systems being used by the military use training datasets consisting largely of ethnic Bamar men’s faces drawn from historical arrest records. As a result, these systems would exhibit higher false positives for women and ethnic minorities, leading to disproportionate stops and detentions. Such errors illustrate how advanced surveillance tools—