using less restrictive technologies, allowing their customers slightly more digital freedom. For example, a telco may have implemented blocks at the DNS level, which was easily bypassed by tech-savvy users, rather than IP-level filtering. Those individual telcos did not make any public claims to protect their customers’ digital rights and therefore their exact motivations are unclear. However, for their security, they will not be named in this report and details of their comparative difference will not be disclosed. These quiet acts of defending digital rights likely allow many people to access information and maintain a fragile link to the truth. Nevertheless, the overarching reality remains that the majority of Myanmar's telcos act as a direct enforcer of the military's information blockade. Blocking under international law Under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), any restriction on the right to freedom of expression, like a block, must pass the three-part test of legality, legitimacy, and necessity. However, the military’s blocking regime failed every pillar of this test. First, the blocks were not legally sound. The military was not a lawful government and therefore its directives were not lawful too. Even if the government was lawful, the directives lacked transparency, legal precision, legal predictability, judicial oversight, and avenues for appeal. Second, the blocks were not necessary to achieve the legitimate aim of protecting national security (assuming that is what the directives claimed). The blocks were targeted at websites like the media that do not threaten the existential security of the country but rather only threaten the military’s control of the State. National security claims cannot be invoked to protect authorities from embarrassment or to conceal illegal acts (like a coup). “National security” is not a license for regime survival. The systematic blocking of the media is a violation of international law Third, the harm caused by the blocks was not proportionate to any potential benefit. Blocking entire social media platforms and media websites with their millions of users and pages of information was a blanket measure that far exceeds any real localised security requirement. Page 14 of 17