4/29/22, 5:15 PM Technology: a problem or a solution in Myanmar’s revolution? · Global Voices Win Myint and the State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, were thrown [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55902070] into jail by the power grabbing military. But democracy did not extend to the internet. Myanmar has faced surveillance and censorship in its digital spaces since it opened the internet to the public in the early 2000s. In 2007, after the saffron revolution, the publicly accessible internet was restricted through internet shutdowns, website censorship and phone tapping. Before the coup in February 2021, the NLD-led government had imposed a 20-month-long internet shutdown in the states of Rakhine and Chin, one of the longest [https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/19/myanmar-end-worlds-longest-internet-shutdown] internet shutdowns imposed in the world. In 2017, the ministry of transport and telecommunication sneakily spent USD 6 million from the President's Office’s special fund to set up the Social Media Monitoring Team to monitor [https://www.opentech.fund/news/information-controls-unprotected-legal-landscape/] the use of social media in Myanmar. However, the government has never released any information about the 6-million-dollar project, and it remains a mystery to the public. The military’s strategy of surveillance, overall, has shifted towards exerting power over the whole information arena. Right after the coup, the military started to practice total internet blackouts, then, nightly internet blackouts, then, infrastructure based blackouts (only FTTH services are available). Most recently, they use location-based blackouts in places with high battle intensity. The prior experience of internet shutdown in Rakhine and Chin states in 2019 and one year of intensive practices of shutting down the internet seem to have given the military an articulated knowledge and practice of internet shutdown that has made recent shutdowns more precise and accurate. Then, the military crushed press freedom by committing ferocious atrocities upon journalists. In March, 2021, the military revoked the media licenses of five major media outlets [https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_myanmar-military-strips-five-media-companieslicenses/6203033.html] : Democratic Voice of Burma, Myanmar Now, Mizzima, Khit Thit Media and 7 Day News. In December 2021, a freelance journalist Soe Naing was killed [https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/photographer-soe-naing-arrested-at-myanmar-protest-dies-in-custody-report-2655807] after four days of torture. He was just taking photos of the silent strike from his apartment. Not long after that, in 2022, Pui Tuidim, one of the founding members of Burma News International (BNI), and Sai Win Aung, an editor of the Federal News Journal, were shot [https://asiacommune.org/2022/01/23/myanmar-two-journalists-killed-in-military-attacks/] to death by the military in Kayin State’s Myawaddy Township and Chin State’s Matupi Township respectively. Surveillance technologies [https://theintercept.com/2021/06/14/myanmar-msab-eu-technology-regulation/] provided by other countries in the name of democratization put the military’s surveillance capability on steroids. Justice for Myanmar reported a list of companies [https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/tools-of-digital-repression] that provide surveillance equipment and services to the military. For social media surveillance and device forensics, the military uses technology from MSAB (Sweden), Open Text (Canada), BlackBag/Cellebrite (USA/Israel). Technologies from Lumex Instruments (Canada), Midian Electronics (USA), Hytera (China) and Icom (Japan) are for police communications. Software from DataWalk (USA) and VMware (USA) enables big data and police IT systems. The military-formed State Administration Council (SAC) imposed a series of legal manipulations and abuses to exert power over the internet. First, it tried to resurrect [https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/myanmar-junta-set-to-pass-draconian-cyber-security-law/] the previously unapproved Cybersecurity Law to criminalize online mobilizations, to penalize the usage of VPNs and to control user data. The Broadcasting Law was also amended [https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/myanmar-junta-further-constricts-media-withamendment-to-broadcasting-law.html] to oppress democratic online media outlets. The Privacy Law was also amended to eliminate [https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-military-junta-suspends-laws-protecting-citizens-privacy-crack-opposition.html] lawful interception regulations and limitations on government data requests from the telecoms. The infamous [https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/amended-law-throwsmyanmar-back-into-media-dark-age] Electronic Transaction Law, which has been used to arrest human rights activists, was also amended to to legally criminalize activities such as posting and sharing any content that criticizes the military and the SAC on social media. The military and its affiliates are trying to monopolize the telecom market. On January 21, 2022, Reuters [https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/exclusive-myanmar-junta-backs-telenor-unit-sale-after-buyer-m1-pairs-with-local-2022-01-21/] reported that the SAC approved the joint acquisition of Telenor Myanmar by the military-backed Shwe Byain Phyu company and the Lebanon based M1 Group. There are four major telecom operators in Myanmar: Myanmar Post and Telecommunication (MPT), MyTel, Telenor and Ooredoo. MPT is jointly government-owned and MyTel is solely military-owned; now they are also trying to acquire Telenor, so only Ooredoo will remain standing as a non-military/non-governmental operator in the country. The people of Myanmar filed a https://globalvoices.org/2022/04/21/technology-a-problem-or-a-solution-in-myanmars-revolution/ 2/4