Who buys and controls the CCTV? Back to contents 56 regional government from their own municipal budget or taxation. It is unclear how or if different government ministries or departments coordinate in such projects; interviews with civil society working closely with the government said different ministries under NLD were inconsistent in their approaches to the implementation. It is likely that under the NLD government, different surveillance projects were run separately under different department policies. Investigating how this is likely to change under the military junta is an important area of research, as knowing the distribution of responsibility and budgets will serve as a starting point for civil society to scrutinise procurement and use of these systems, and it will also enable tapping into accountability processes surrounding the use of CCTVs. And yet, even under the NLD government, there was a complete lack of a comprehensive regulatory framework for data protection and privacy applicable for different departments – and little interest in adopting one. “Evidence of how data in current cases is handled in Myanmar does not inspire confidence but reveals a modus operandi that does not consider the importance of privacy and data protection. In an unsolved case of child sexual assault, the police department unnecessarily released the child’s identity on social media, without providing her any prior warning or obtaining her consent.” Nature of current use Because of the lack of transparency, proactive disclosure, and avenues for access to information, details of current use and exact responsibilities are yet to be uncovered. This opacity is at odds with international standards of transparency and responsible public procurement (see Right of Access to Information). Concerns about transparency are even more urgent given the military’s control of public infrastructure, whereby smart city systems such as CCTV networks are readily used to monitor protests and other dissidents. Since the time of the