Before entering Burma, companies should establish clear procedures for referring government requests that may present risk of human rights harm to appropriately senior levels of management. Companies should also provide training to employees tasked with responding to government requests on relevant policies. These measures are particularly important during a period when the central government is negotiating ceasefires with over a dozen ethnic armed groups after decades of civil war and there is risk that surveillance powers may be abused to gain advantage.39 Moreover, given the precedent set with the network shutdown in 2007, policies should specifically address how the company will respond to requests to shut down networks during times of unrest. Company policies should take into account current Burmese law, which grants the government broad powers to declare public emergencies, with scant safeguards against misuse of these powers.40 Transparency and Monitoring Telecommunications companies should commit to publishing the terms of any licensing agreement and the payments made to obtain or maintain telecommunication licenses. In addition, companies should publish information on the structure of any joint ventures or investment vehicles formed to operate in Burma. Disclosure of company actions that directly impact users’ rights is also critical. Companies should commit to regular transparency reports on the aggregate number of governmental requests for user data or limitations on expression it receives from the government, and how the company responded.41 Companies should also commit to notifying affected users in specific cases where they have complied with government requests. For example, if a telecommunications operator 39 40 See Transnational Institute, Developing Disparity. Regional Investment in Burma’s Borderlands, Amsterdam, TNI, February 2013. State Protection Law, No. 3/1975, http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs6/State_Protection_Law+amendment.pdf (accessed April 8, 2013), chapter II; Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, chapter XI. 41 Several Internet companies report aggregate data on government requests for censorship or surveillance, which may provide useful models for such reporting. See, for example, “Google Transparency Report,” Google, accessed April 25, 2013, http://www.google.com/transparencyreport; “Twitter Transparency Report,” Twitter, accessed April 25, 2013, https://transparency.twitter.com/; “2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report,” Microsoft, accessed May 5, 2013, https://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/. 19 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | MAY 2013