Dhevy Sivaprakasam is Senior Policy Counsel, Golda Benjamin is Asia-Pacific Campaigner, Wai Phyo Myint is Asia Pacific Policy Analyst, and Alexia Skok is Communications and Media Manager at Access Now.

Nyaunghswe, Myanmar – 17 Feb 2021: Myanmar people took to the streets to protest against the military coup. Shutterstock/R. Bociaga

This Sunday, August 20, it will be two years since curfew-style internet shutdowns across Myanmar’s Hpakant township disconnected the world from the ongoing devastation inflicted by the military. Heinous reports of targeted airstrikes, widespread arson, ill-treatment, and killings continue to trickle out from the township — and many others across the country — hampered by connectivity blockages. Over 50 million people in Myanmar are now halfway through a third harrowing year of repression. Yet, as the crisis slides out of news cycles, there is no decisive pushback from the international community on the horizon.

Control of information allows for control of people. The military’s coup is also digital — and the online takeover is very nearly complete. Governments cannot continue to simply sit idle as the Myanmar military terrorizes a nation with impunity through the abuse of surveillance tools and internet shutdowns to perpetrate atrocities. They must commit to and coordinate effective measures to ban the sale of surveillance technologies and assistance to the military, and provide alternative means for internet access to combat the devastating impacts of shutdowns and targeted blockings. 

Abuse of surveillance technologies

In a desperate bid to seek international legitimacy, the junta seems determined to impose elections on the people of Myanmar “under any circumstances.” Yet, it recently extended the state of emergency for the fourth time, indefinitely delaying planned elections and granting itself a time extension to ramp up surveillance infrastructure and fortify an invisible digital prison within which people are monitored, marked, and ultimately forced into subservient voting.

The military already has near-complete domination of Myanmar’s online spaces. It has activated intercept spyware across a telecommunications network it fully controls, and revised regulatory frameworks to facilitate unfettered collection of data relating to people’s locations, communications, relationships, and other essential information such as banking and property ownership. It has expanded biometric systems, including pilot projects discriminatorily tracking minority communities, and is reportedly forcing small business owners to install closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs) while demanding full-body images to track household numbers. All of this information is being collated into a national database for military oversight, while it plows on with efforts to conduct a population census by 2024 for the looming elections. This arsenal of technological tools is propping open digital windows into the lives of millions, laying bare snippets of private information that the junta is meticulously puzzling together, creating invasive pictures of individuals’ personal lifestyles, experiences, and behaviors. 

But there are global actors at play assisting the junta. The digital tools the military is relying on are not domestic. They come from foreign suppliers, and international actors facilitate their procurement and deployment. In January, Yanghee Lee, member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar,