9/24/21, 8:39 PM The State of Internet Censorship in Myanmar | OONI Findings As part of this study, network measurements were collected through OONI Probe software tests performed across six local vantage points in Myanmar between 25th October 2016 to 28th February 2017. Upon analysis of the collected data, no block pages were detected that could confirm cases of censorship. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and the Tor network appeared to be accessible in all networks where tests were run. While OONI tests had previously detected the presence of Blue Coat software (some types of which can potentially be used for internet censorship and surveillance) in Myanmar in late 2012, the presence of Blue Coat was not detected as part of this study (and neither were any other middle boxes). Certain sites, however, presented a high amount of network anomalies are part of our testing, indicating that connections to them might have been tampered with. The findings pertaining to these sites are summarized in the table below. Sites TCP/IP blocking HTTP failure HTTP diff DNS blocking Control failure Not blocked http://burma.usembassy.gov 0 9 0 0 32 0 http://realdoll.com 0 41 0 0 0 0 http://www.sportingbet.com 40 0 0 0 1 0 http://www.cidh.org 9 0 0 0 32 0 http://www.vibe.com 0 0 7 0 32 2 The values under the “Control failure” column in the table above pertain to measurements where we are unable to determine whether access to those sites was blocked or not, because the control request failed. It’s useful to cross-reference this information with whether connections to the site in question were confirmed to not be blocked. The fact that connections to vibe.com, for example, were not blocked twice indicates that the site is least likely to have been tampered with, in comparison to the other sites included in the table above. Access to realdoll.com, on the other hand, which presented HTTP failures every time it was tested is more likely to have been blocked. Similarly, gambling site sportingbet.com which presented signs of TCP/IP blocking almost every time it was tested is also likely to have been censored. The website of the Organization of American States (OAS), which is responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights in America, presented signs of TCP/IP blocking. The testing of this site also presented signs of TCP/IP blocking in a previous OONI study on internet censorship in Zambia in October 2016. While this inevitably raises the question of whether such measurements are false positives, it’s worth noting that the failure rate from a control vantage point is less than 1%. The motivation behind the potential blocking of this site though remains unclear. Finally, the testing of the site of the U.S. embassy in Myanmar presented signs of HTTP blocking, indicating that access to it may have been tampered with. The testing of multiple other sites also presented network anomalies, but those were ruled out as false positives based on our heuristics. Acknowledgement of limitations https://ooni.org/post/myanmar-report/ 17/19