Executive Summary
A new leaked dataset reveals the Chinese company Geedge Networks’ business in
Myanmar and exposes a significant number of telecommunications companies that
are implementing sophisticated surveillance and censorship technology on behalf
of the illegal Myanmar military junta. The leaked dataset offers detailed insights into
the inner workings of Chinese internet surveillance and censorship technology that
is exported to Myanmar by a company that frames its work as associated with
China's Belt and Road Initiative.
The dataset has been reviewed by a coalition of media and non-governmental/civil
society organisations through the Great Firewall Export project made up of
Amnesty International, InterSecLab, the Globe and Mail, Paper Trail Media, Tor
Project, DER STANDARD, and Follow The Money.
The Internet in Myanmar since the military’s February 2021 illegal coup attempt is
among the most restricted in the world. The rolling out of a commercialised version
of China’s Great Firewall gives the junta unprecedented access to and control over
the online activities of 33.4 million internet users in Myanmar.
Notably, the hardware, software and support provided by Geedge Networks to the
Myanmar military junta enables the tracking of network traffic at the individual level
and can identify the geographic location of mobile subscribers in real time by
linking their activity to specific cell identifiers (cell IDs). As such, the junta has an
enhanced capability to effectively track down, arrest, torture and kill human rights
defenders, journalists and revolutionary forces across the country. The military
junta can do so with the direct assistance of telecommunications companies in
Myanmar exposed in the dataset – including ATOM (formerly Telenor Myanmar),
Mytel, Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Ooredoo Myanmar, Frontiir,
StreamNet , Golden TMH Telecom, Internet Maekhong Network (IM-Net), Myanmar
Broadband Telecom (MBT), Myanmar Telecommunication Network (MTN),
Campana, Global Technology Group and China Unicom – that are integral to the
set-up of a national firewall for the Myanmar junta.
This investigation into the business dealings of Geedge Networks with the
Myanmar junta builds on a June 2024 report by Justice For Myanmar into how
Geedge was initiating country-wide internet surveillance and censorship through
the junta-controlled Information Technology and Cyber Security Department
(ITCSD) of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC).
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