Myanmar: Note on New Draft Cyber Security Law Myanmar: Note on New Draft Cyber Security Law April 2022 Centre for Law and Democracy info@law-democracy.org +1 902 431-3688 www.law-democracy.org Introduction 1 In February 2021, the military regime running Myanmar circulated a draft Cyber Security Law. The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) prepared an analysis of that draft on an urgent basis with a view to helping local stakeholders understand the problems with it from the perspective of international human rights law. 2 Following a barrage of criticism, the military regime appeared to withdraw the draft Cyber Security Law that same month. However, a revised draft was circulated in January 2022 (draft Law). This Note provides an analysis of the new features of the draft Law (i.e. the January 2022 version). 3 As such, it should be read in conjunction with our earlier Analysis. Like that Analysis, the focus of this Note is on the human rights implications of the draft Law, with a particular focus on freedom of expression. As such, it does not address a number of other potential problems such as practical challenges in implementing it or the costs involved. We note, at the outset, that all of the concerns we expressed in our February 2021 Analysis remain relevant. A few of the most significant concerns outlined in that assessment were: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence. You are free to copy, distribute and display this work and to make derivative works, provided you give credit to Centre for Law and Democracy, do not use this work for commercial purposes and distribute any works derived from this publication under a licence identical to this one. To view a copy of this licence, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. 2 That Analysis, along with other work we have done relating to Myanmar post military coup, is available on our Myanmar Resource Page at https://www.law-democracy.org/live/legal-work/myanmar-resource-page/. The Analysis itself is available at: https://www.law-democracy.org/live/wpcontent/uploads/2021/11/Myanmar.Cyber-Security-Analsyis.Feb21-1.pdf. 3 Our analysis is based on an unofficial translation of the draft Law. We note that in many places the translation is unclear and hard to understand. We apologise for any errors in our analysis based on unclear translation. 1 The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy. 1