5/22/22, 12:03 AM Myanmar: Freedom on the Net 2021 Country Report | Freedom House Anonymity has also been limited by the government’s enforcement of SIM-card registration requirements, 278 whereby subscribers must provide their name, citizenship identification document, birth date, address, nationality, and gender, 279 and noncitizens must provide their passports. Some subscribers have reported being required by telecommunications companies to include further information beyond the bounds of the regulations, including their ethnicity. 280 Mytel reported in February 2020 that only 30 percent of subscribers had registered. 281 The MoTC announced that month that it had blocked over 6.5 million unregistered SIM cards. 282 The MoTC then ordered telecommunications providers to bar outgoing calls for millions of additional unregistered SIM cards, starting in April 2020. 283 At the end of June 2020, the cards were reportedly deactivated, with the corresponding phone numbers deleted and subscriber money forfeited. In March 2019, the government asked mobile service providers to limit each user to two SIM cards in order to protect “personal and national security.” 284 It is unclear how this is being implemented by providers. The government was working to establish biometric SIM-card registration prior to the coup. In November 2019, authorities released a tender to create a database that can store up to 70 million records of biometric data received from mobile-service registrations, 285 and the tender was closed in June 2020. 286 The government announced that month that it had requisitioned resources from the USF (see A2), which was intended to support mobile access for marginalized areas, to pay for the biometric database. 287 The database would include fingerprints and facial-recognition information. 288 It is unclear which company won the tender. The draft legal framework required to implement the plan, including data protection laws, had not been made public prior to the coup. There are no clear restrictions on encryption in law, although vague provisions in the Telecommunications Law and the Electronic Transactions Law could be interpreted to restrict the practice. C5 0-6 pts Does state surveillance of internet activities infringe on users’ right to privacy? 1/6 Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 1 due to new evidence that authorities have obtained surveillance technology such as data extraction tools, as well as problematic legal changes including the suspension of limited privacy safeguards under the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens and an amendment to the Electronic Transactions Law that increased government access to personal data. State surveillance grew more pervasive during the coverage period. Despite the fact that Article 357 of the constitution included protection for private communications, government surveillance was a serious concern prior to the coup. After it seized power, the military circulated a draft cybercrimes law that would place all private data under its unchecked control. 289 The draft law requires service providers TOP to store private data on servers designated by the military, and to make them accessible to military interception without any form of oversight (see C6). 290 Although the draft has not yet been enacted, the military unilaterally amended the Electronic Transactions Law in February 2021 by adding some of the same problematic provisions included in the draft. 291 For instance, the revised law grants the authorities https://freedomhouse.org/country/myanmar/freedom-net/2021 22/28