4/10/26, 12:33 PM Myanmar Customers Sue Telecoms Giant Telenor for Sharing Private Data of Dissidents with Military Rulers - Open Society Justice Initiative “My lawyers struggled to get information about my case and know about the evidence against me. It was not a fair trial because I did not see any evidence presented in court, and I did not get information about any evidence. I did not know who the witnesses were in my case. In these political trials, they always convict the defendants,” said Aung Thu, individual plaintiff. Approval at Headquarters (HQ) The lawsuit argues that Telenor ASA, at its headquarters in Norway, was privy to the military’s requests and the inherent risks. A Telenor ASA document contained a standardized procedure for how requests from authorities should be handled by its subsidiaries. In accordance with this protocol, an internal written assessment was prepared by the risk assessment team in Myanmar. Where the requests infringed on human rights or lacked a legal basis, they had to be escalated to Telenor ASA in Norway. At the parent company, the requests were then reviewed by the HQ risk assessment team. The protocol document appears to envisage that in some scenarios the request would get escalated beyond the HQ risk assessment team to a dedicated committee at the parent company, and then potentially even further to the CEO. However, it is not presently known to the plaintiffs whether, in practice, any requests were in fact escalated beyond the HQ risk assessment team in Norway. The filings present evidence that several requests were escalated from the Myanmar team to the HQ risk assessment team in Norway, which recommended that Telenor Myanmar Ltd. should comply with the disclosure request from the military. Even when requests were not escalated to Norway, the parent company was regularly informed by its Myanmar subsidiary about the military’s data requests through messages between staff in the two locations. Despite this, Telenor ASA appears not to have ever intervened to prevent this practice, thus apparently signaling tacit approval. “Telenor ASA in Norway clearly contributed to the practice of handing over user data, despite the inherent risks for its customers in Myanmar. We have evidence of cases where the team at HQ expressly recommended the data to be handed over. Even where we do not have this information, we know that staff at HQ would receive regular updates on data requests from a dedicated employee in Myanmar,” said Jan Magne Langseth, lawyer at Simonsen Vogt Wiig. What’s Next Following the filing of the case, Telenor ASA will have the opportunity to formally respond to the claims. Whilst Telenor's formal response to the claim will be awaited, Telenor's response to the pre-action notice letter on October 20, 2025 was to deny responsibility. In their response, they stated that they were legally required to comply with the requests from the military and had no choice but to comply in order to protect their employees. Once the court has confirmed whether the case can be tried as a class action, it will schedule a hearing where both parties can present their evidence and oral arguments. “If successful, this case would be the first ever to hold a telecoms company to account for not sufficiently protecting user data from access by an authoritarian regime. The importance of such a precedent for other companies operating in high-risk countries cannot be overstated,” said Beini Ye, legal counsel at OSJI. “With authoritarianism on the rise around the globe, this case should serve as a warning not only about corporate control over our data in general but to Telenor specifically, which continues to operate in countries with a heightened risk of data misuse. Stronger privacy laws that give individuals control, stricter limits on data retention, meaningful transparency obligations, responsible exit plans, and enforceable protections that prevent companies from gathering sensitive data in the first place are all examples of what we need,” said Joseph Wilde-Ramsing, director of advocacy at SOMO. RELATED CASES https://www.justiceinitiative.org/newsroom/myanmar-customers-sue-telecoms-giant-telenor-for-sharing-private-data-of-dissidents-with-military-rulers 3/5