INTERNET ENEMIES / 12TH MARCH 2011/ WORLD DAY AGAINST CENSORSHIP ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 11 Burma Internet Enemy Domain name: .mm Population: 53 414 374 Internet-users: 300 000 Average charge for one hour’s connection at a cybercafé: about 0,55 US$ Average monthly salary: about 27,32 US$ Number of imprisoned netizens: 2 Burma took drastic measures in 2010 to reorganise the country’s Internet and to arm itself with the means, at the next sign of a crisis, to cut off its population’s Web access without affecting official connections. Prior to the November 2010 elections – the first in twenty years – censors resorted to massive crackdowns, intimidation and cyberattacks to reduce the risk of any negative coverage. Tampering is now at its height. Widespread Net censorship in Burma The regime is enforcing harsh and widespread Internet censorship. The Burmese firewall restricts users to an intranet purged of any anti-government content. Blocked websites include exiled Burmese media, proxies and other censorship circumvention tools, certain international media, and blogs and sites offering scholarships abroad. In an interview granted to Rolling Stone magazine, American hacker and WikiLeaks member Jacob Applebaum, exposed the scope of the censorship by showing that only 118 of the country’s 12,284 IP addresses are not blocked by the regime and have access to the World Wide Web. He also showed how vulnerable the network is the event of attacks. Censors may also be counting on the complicity of Western companies. Some Burmese Internet service provi- ders acquired censorship equipment and hardware from the Chinese subsidiary of the Franco-American company Alcatel-Lucent. On March 24, 2010, Reporters Without Borders and the Sherpa Association sent a letter to Alcatel-Lucent’s management to ask for explanations, notably about the sale in Burma Lawful Interception Integrated hardware. The company denied this claim, insisting that it merely supplied telecom infrastructures within the framework of a Chinese-funded project. Yet in an article appearing in the May 19-25, 2008 issue of the newspaper Myanmar Times, a spokesman for the state-controlled ISP Hanthawaddy confirmed that the Alcatel’s Chinese subsidiary did indeed provide a website filtering and surveillance system. Outstanding bloggers Despite the regime’s iron grip on the Internet, the number of bloggers keeps rising: there are now 1,500 of them, 500 of whom blog regularly. When Burmese bloggers based