Dean: Myanmar were “legal” under the 2012-revised Ward and Village Tract Administration Law requiring the registration of overnight guests in household with local officials. Under the pretence of checking for unregistered guests, private homes were searched in the middle of the night in order to harass and detain activists (Aung 2016). The law was abolished in 2016 following ‟a protracted arm-wrestle” in the parliament between the military MPs and the members of the NLD, many of who had been political prisoners themselves (Thant 2016). In 2017, possibility of arrest remains real for activists or reporters working on interfaith promotion, on sensitive border areas particularly in Arakan State but also in Kachin and Shan states, or for those criticizing extremist Buddhism or members of the government or army. During the first year of the NLD government, Freedom House (2017) observed ‟a notable increase in the number of defamation cases brought against journalists and social media users, some of which were initiated in response to criticism of the government or military authorities.” The cases under the Telecommunications Law’s Clause 66d, while sporadically enforced during the previous government, have increased since the NLD rule, some of the defendants charged for insulting or defaming senior members of the party, including Aung San Suu Kyi, with Pen Myanmar having recorded 38 cases in 2016, compared to seven during 2013-2015 (Lun Min Mang 2016). Some high profile cases of surveillance have been publicized, for example, the official with military security affairs in the area of Yangon where the assassinated U Ko Ni lived, told Reuters he was charged with watching U Ko Ni, which he characterized as ‟routine surveillance of a prominent local figure;” while also two of U Ko Ni's associates admitted to having been directly approached by agents to provide information about his activities (Wa Lone and Lewis 2017, emphasis added). More numerous are cases that go unreported or are collected as evidence by the various human rights organizations. Also contributing to the overall expansion of surveillance are the practices of collecting intelligence on the different fractions amongst the military and power elites themselves that have increased, on the MPs for asserting pressure as a part of the power struggle, on powerful ethnic organizations, but also of collecting business intelligence in the fierce competition for market shares in one of the remaining untapped countries. Intelligence collection and deployment to purge the military’s own members has, alongside patronage, been one of the strategies for its long-time cohesion (Callahan 2001; Min 2008; Kyaw 2009). The relationship between surveillance and the rule of law, related to the balance of power between the state and its citizens, is a central concern within democratic legal systems (Cohen 2015). The laws in Myanmar remain far from being ‟a neutral concept permitting and encouraging trust to impartially resolve disputes,” as put by Houtmann in 1999 describing the law then as something that had ‟become an instrument for territorialising and entrenching the army within what it considers its very own domain...” (Houtmann 1999: 89). In 2017—the second year of the NLD-led government—the laws continue to be used to stifle dissent, criticism and free expression. Reversing the institutionalization of discrimination and the vested interest of deploying draconian laws for maintenance and practice of elite power has not been prioritized. The top policy priority of both the former President Thein Sein and the incumbent government, as declared, has been the ending of the protracted civil wars at ethnic states’ border areas, pursued at the expense of ‟other pressing matters such as bureaucratic, economic and legal reforms” (Lintner 2017). The NLD reaction to the mounting calls to ‟fix problematic laws” by using its overwhelming parliamentary majority, following the arrest in June 2017 of three journalists working for the internationally renowned media outlets (Democratic Voice of Burma and The Irrawaddy) and their charge under the Unlawful Association Act for reporting from the territory of an armed ethnic organization, will test the government’s potential to provide its people protection and rights. ‟The NLD politicians cannot do anything about surveillance. They don’t even care about surveillance. They don’t even care about who is doing surveillance on them… U Ko Ni got shot at the airport. It is very, very disappointing. I worry that maybe more will be assassinated…The NLD have a lot of stuff to do. Or they don’t understand about technology or they do not have money” (Interview, a person with experience in Myanmar’s military intelligence 25.04.2017). Surveillance & Society 15(3/4) 502