A multi-perspective view of Internet censorship in Myanmar FOCI’21, August 27, 2021, Virtual Event, USA ACKNOWLEDGMENTS [22] Forbes. 2021. Social Media Blackout: Myanmar Military Government Blocks Twitter, Instagram. https://web.archive.org/web/ 20210702004902/https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/02/05/ social-media-blackout-myanmar-military-government-blocks-twitter-instagram/ ?sh=40409fec2f05 [23] Tina Freyburg and Lisa Garbe. 2018. Blocking the bottleneck: Internet shutdowns and ownership at election times in sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Communication 12 (2018), 3896–3916. [24] Jennifer Gandhi and Jane Lawrence Sumner. 2020. Measuring the consolidation of power in nondemocracies. The Journal of Politics 82, 4 (2020), 1545–1558. [25] Anita R Gohdes. 2015. Pulling the plug: Network disruptions and violence in REFERENCES civil conflict. Journal of Peace Research 52, 3 (2015), 352–367. Access Now reports on 2019 trends in inter[1] Access Now. 2020. [26] Anonymous Group. 2021. Tweet: Anonymous encourages the use of OONI for net shutdowns, approaches to defending free expression. https: monitoring censorship in Myanmar. https://web.archive.org/web/20210701134156/ //web.archive.org/web/20210611124134/https://www.accessnow.org/cms/ https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1359777805131677699?s=20 assets/uploads/2020/02/KeepItOn-2019-report-1.pdf. [27] Facebook group. 2021. Image posted on Facebook group shows IP [2] Access Now. 2021. Internet shutdowns report: Shattered dreams addresses of VPN services that were ordered to be blocked. https: and lost opportunities — a year in the fight to #KeepItOn. https: //web.archive.org/web/20210507134042/https://www.facebook.com/groups/ //web.archive.org/web/20210522195750/https://www.accessnow.org/cms/ yesagyogp/permalink/1119533741827118/ assets/uploads/2021/03/KeepItOn-report-on-the-2020-data_Mar-2021_3.pdf. [28] Telenor Group. 2020. The case for open internet in Myanmar. [3] Anonymous, Arian Akhavan Niaki, Nguyen Phong Hoang, Phillipa Gill, and https://web.archive.org/web/20210521052853/https://www.telenor.com. Amir Houmansadr. 2020. Triplet Censors: Demystifying Great Firewall’s DNS mm/en/article/the-case-for-open-internet-in-myanmar Censorship Behavior. In Free and Open Communications on the Internet. USENIX. [29] Telenor Group. 2020. Internet services restricted in Myan[4] Simurgh Aryan, Homa Aryan, and J. Alex Halderman. 2013. Internet Censorship mar townships (Updated 12 May 2020). https://web. in Iran: A First Look. In Free and Open Communications on the Internet. USENIX. archive.org/web/20210510032911/https://www.telenor.com/ [5] Nikkei Asis. 2021. Myanmar junta builds ’walled garden’ of internet-services-restricted-in-five-townships-in-myanmar-03-february-2020/ internet services - Nikkei Asia. https://web.archive.org/web/ [30] Telenor Group. 2021. Directive to block social media service - Telenor 20210513221939/https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Myanmar-Coup/ Group. https://web.archive.org/web/20210508213547/https://www.telenor.com/ Myanmar-junta-builds-walled-garden-of-internet-services directive-to-block-social-media-service/ [6] K. Benson, A. Dainotti, k. claffy, and E. Aben. 2013. Gaining Insight into AS-level [31] Telenor Group. 2021. Tweet: Telenor announces that cellular restrictions have Outages through Analysis of Internet Background Radiation. In Traffic Monitoring been in place since March 15. https://web.archive.org/web/20210513080349/https: and Analysis Workshop (TMA). //twitter.com/TelenorGroup/status/1372097178676641793 [7] Kevin Bock, George Hughey, Louis-Henri Merino, Tania Arya, Daniel Liscinsky, [32] Andreas Guillot, Romain Fontugne, Philipp Winter, Pascal Mérindol, Alistair Regina Pogosian, and Dave Levin. 2020. Come as You Are: Helping Unmodified King, Alberto Dainotti, and Cristel Pelsser. 2019. Chocolatine: Outage Detection Clients Bypass Censorship with Server-side Evasion. In SIGCOMM. ACM. for Internet Background Radiation. In Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Conference [8] Kevin Bock, George Hughey, Xiao Qiang, and Dave Levin. 2019. Geneva: Evolving (TMA). Censorship Evasion Strategies. In Computer and Communications Security. ACM. [33] Freedom House. 2020. Myanmar: Freedom on the Net 2020 Country Report | [9] Raphael Boleslavsky, Mehdi Shadmehr, and Konstantin Sonin. 2018. Media Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/country/myanmar/freedom-net/2020 Freedom in the Shadow of a Coup. Journal of the European Economic Association [34] Philip N Howard, Sheetal D Agarwal, and Muzammil M Hussain. 2011. When do (2018). states disconnect their digital networks? Regime responses to the political uses [10] CAIDA. [n.d.]. IODA: Internet Outage Detection and Analysis. https://ioda.caida. of social media. The Communication Review 14, 3 (2011), 216–232. org/ioda/dashboard. [35] OpenNet Initiative. 2004. Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia in 2004. https: [11] china-cdn 2014. CDN providers blocked by China. https://web.archive.org/web/ //web.archive.org/web/20210702013116/https://opennet.net/studies/saudi 20210702012211/https://www.cdnfinder.com/cdn-providers-blocked-china. [36] OpenNet Initiative. 2005. Internet Filtering in Iran in 2004-2005: A Country [12] CNET. 2021. Facebook temporarily blocked in Myanmar after military coup Study. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702012952/https://opennet.net/studies/ CNET. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702005018/https://www.cnet.com/ iran2005 news/facebook-temporarily-blocked-in-myanmar-after-military-coup/ [37] OpenNet Initiative. 2005. Internet Filtering in Yemen in 2004-2005: A Country [13] Abdi Latif Dahir. 2016. Gabon has been imposing a 12-hourStudy. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702013032/https://opennet.net/studies/ a-day internet curfew as its political crisis grows. https:// yemen web.archive.org/web/20210702012309/https://qz.com/africa/781752/ [38] Amnesty International. 2021. Myanmar: New internet blackout “heinous and gabon-has-been-imposing-a-12-hour-a-day-internet-curfew-as-its-political-crisis-grows/. reckless”. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702012636/https://www.amnesty. org/en/latest/news/2021/02/myanmar-new-internet-blackout/ [14] Abdi Latif Dahir. 2017. Internet shutdowns are costing [39] Harvey G Kebschull. 1994. Operation" Just Missed": Lessons from failed coup African governments more than we thought. https://web. attempts. Armed Forces & Society 20, 4 (1994), 565–579. archive.org/web/20210701133002/https://qz.com/africa/1089749/ [40] Kentik. [n.d.]. Kentik. https://www.kentik.com/ internet-shutdowns-are-increasingly-taking-a-toll-on-africas-economies/. [41] Kentik. [n.d.]. NetFlow Guide: Types of Network Flow Analysis. https://www. [15] A. Dainotti, C. Squarcella, E. Aben, K. Claffy, M. Chiesa, M. Russo, and A. kentik.com/netflow-guide-types-of-network-flow-analysis/ Pescapè. 2014. Analysis of Country-wide Internet Outages Caused by Censorship. [42] Eda Keremoğlu and Nils B Weidmann. 2020. How dictators control the internet: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 22, 6 (Dec 2014), 1964–1977. a review essay. Comparative Political Studies 53, 10-11 (2020), 1690–1703. [16] Alberto Dainotti, Claudio Squarcella, Emile Aben, Kimberly C. Claffy, Marco [43] A. King, A. Dainotti, B. Huffaker, and k. claffy. 2014. A Coordinated View of the Chiesa, Michele Russo, and Antonio Pescapé. 2011. Analysis of country-wide Temporal Evolution of Large-scale Internet Events. Computing 96, 1 (Jan 2014), Internet outages caused by censorship. In ACM IMC. 53–65. [17] Alberto Dainotti, Claudio Squarcella, Emile Aben, Kimberly C Claffy, Marco [44] Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E Roberts. 2013. How censorship in China Chiesa, Michele Russo, and Antonio Pescapé. 2011. Analysis of country-wide allows government criticism but silences collective expression. American Political internet outages caused by censorship. In Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGCOMM Science Review (2013), 326–343. conference on Internet measurement conference. 1–18. [45] Phyu Phyu Kyaw, Maria Xynou, and Arturo Filastò. 2020. Myanmar [18] D. Dittrich and E. Kenneally. 2012. The Menlo Report: Ethical Principles Guiding blocks “fake news” websites amid COVID-19 pandemic. https://ooni.org/post/ Information and Communication Technology Research. Technical Report. U.S. 2020-myanmar-blocks-websites-amid-covid19/ Department of Homeland Security. [46] Citizen Lab. 2021. Citizen Lab test lists repository. https://github.com/citizenlab/ [19] DW. 2021. Myanmar coup: Aung San Suu Kyi detained as military seizes power | DW test-lists | 01.02.2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702005944/https://www.dw.com/ [47] Philipp M Lutscher, Nils B Weidmann, Margaret E Roberts, Mattijs Jonker, Alistair en/myanmar-coup-aung-san-suu-kyi-detained-as-military-seizes-power/ King, and Alberto Dainotti. 2020. At home and abroad: The use of denial-ofa-56400678 service attacks during elections in nondemocratic regimes. Journal of Conflict [20] Arturo Filastò and Jacob Appelbaum. 2012. OONI: Open Observatory of Network Resolution 64, 2-3 (2020), 373–401. Interference. In Free and Open Communications on the Internet. USENIX. [48] Frontier Myanmar. 2018. Myanmar’s broadband price war | Fron[21] Arturo Filastò and Jacob Appelbaum. 2012. OONI: Open Observatory of Network tier Myanmar. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702011029/https://www. Interference. In 2nd USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the frontiermyanmar.net/en/myanmars-broadband-price-war/ Internet (FOCI 12). We thank the anonymous reviewers and our shepherd, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, for their helpful feedback. We also would like to thank Prof. Michael L. Best for discussing with us our preliminary findings. This research was partially supported by National Science Foundation grant CNS-1705024. 33