5/23/22, 2:51 AM Internet Filtering in Burma in 2005: A Country Study | OpenNet Initiative Nearly identical prohibitions of content "detrimental" to state interests can be found in the Printers and Publishers Law,59the Computer Science Development Law,60and the Electronic Transactions Law,61all punishable by fines and prison sentences, some up to fifteen years. These are indistinguishable from, though often accompanied by, similar prohibitions on the distribution of "state secrets."62The prototype for the state secret rules appears to be the Official Secrets Act of 1923, which is still in use and broadly prohibits trafficking in any "information which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy."63 In practice, the law has been used to silence dissident voices: "secrets" under the law have included a book by Aung San Suu Kyi64and leaflets critical of the state.65 Presumably, information distributed via the Internet is subject to all of these laws, though ONI was unable to find a record of any arrests for posting banned content. This may have more to do with the difficulty of gaining private access to the World Wide Web than with government leniency. G. Cybercafe Regulation Cybercafes operate under license66 from the Myanmar Information Communications Technology Development Corporation (MICTDC), a "consortium of 50 local companies with the full support from the Government of the Union of Myanmar."67In addition to requiring that users register before accessing the Internet, cybercafe licenses require cafe owners to take screenshots of user activity every five minutes and deliver CDs containing these images to the MICTDC at regular intervals. Reportedly, the MICTDC requests the CDs only sporadically, if at all, but such surveillance techniques nevertheless cause users to selfcensor.68Finally, the licenses ban the use of tunneling software and proxies; reportedly, however, neither the licenses nor the state's filtering software have been effective in this regard. 69 3. TESTING METHODOLOGY A. Methods ONI performs technical testing across multiple levels of access at multiple time intervals. The team analyzes results within the contextual framework of the target state's filtering technology and regulations. To obtain meaningful, accurate results we: generate lists of domain names and URLs that have been or are likely to be blocked; enumerate ISPs and national routing topography; determine the type, location, and behavior of the filtering technology; deploy network interrogation and enumeration software at multiple access points; and conduct a thorough statistical analysis of results. Determining which URLs to test is a vital component of our research, as it reveals the filtering system's technical capacity and content areas subject to blocking. ONI employs two types of lists: a list of "high impact" sites reported to be blocked or likely to be blocked in the state due to their content (for example, political opposition); and a "global list" containing a control list of manually categorized Web sites reflecting a range of Internet content (for example, news and hacking sites). To explore Internet filtering, we deploy network interrogation devices and applications, which perform the censorship enumeration, at various Internet access levels. These tools download the ONI testing lists and check whether specific URLs and domains are accessible from that point on the network. Interrogation devices are designed to run inside a state (i.e., behind its firewall) to perform specific, sensitive functions with varying degrees of stealth. Similarly, ONI distributes interrogation applications to trusted volunteers who run the software inside the state. For testing, ONI obtains network access at multiple levels through: Proxy servers, Long distance dial-up, Distributed applications, and Dedicated servers. During initial testing, we use remote computers located in countries that filter. These remote computers are located behind the state's firewalls yet allow access to clients connecting from the wider Internet. We attempt to access the URL and domain name lists through these computers to reveal what content is filtered, and how consistently it is blocked. ONI also tests these lists from control locations in non-filtered states. The testing system flags all URLs and domains that are accessible from the control location, but inaccessible from ones inside the target state, as potentially blocked. B. Results Analysis https://opennet.net/studies/burma 5/15