Kristin Kopach

POS 368- Honors Paper

December 7, 2010
Internet Filtering in Burma: Depth and Implications from the Western Perspective

Abstract:
! Burma has never been a staple of democracy nor a pinnacle for human or civil rights. As
the U.S. State department has so evidently remarked in its description of Burma, sanctions and
limited international co-operation with Burma have occurred since 1968, when the military junta
took power, and worsened since 1988, when a pro-democracy demonstration ended in many
casualties1.
! The recent 2010 elections have again placed Burma in the forefront of human and civil
rights abuses. As an isolated state, reliable news reports are few and far between. One week
before the election, a sophisticated and massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack
occurred in Burma yielding to speculation of military involvement due to similar internet stifling
techniques in 20072 3.
! U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has made it clear within her “21st Century
Statecraft” platform that the use of the internet is pivotal for the evolution of democracy via
social networking, et al 4. These statements coupled with the extreme displeasure with the recent
elections5 allow one to extrapolate that if the Burmese government is indeed at fault for the
recent DDoS attack, and the fact of their pervasive internet filtering, that these activities must be
corrected before relations with the West and Burma can be furthered.
! In this paper, I will analyze current relations between Burma and the West (the US, EU/
UK and Canada). I expect to determine if the Burmese junta did actually carry out the most
recent DDoS and it’s level of filtering via the utilization of the OpenNet Initiative. Finally, I will
predict the possibilities of improved relations with the West and the possibilities of democracy-
including the opening of media in Burma.

1 US Department of State. Burma. Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. 28 July 2010. 24 November 2010.
! <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35910.htm>.

2 “Burma hit by massive net attack ahead of election”. BBC News: Technology. 4 November 2010. 24
! November 2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11693214>.

3 Turner, Brian. “Burma taken offline by massive DDoS attack”. Tech Watch. 8 November 2010. 24
! November 2010. <http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/11/08/burma-taken-offline-by-massive-ddos-attack/>

4 US Department of State. 21st Century Statecraft. 2010. 24 November 2010. <http://www.state.gov/

! statecraft/index.htm>.

5 Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Burma’s Elections”. 7 November 2010. US Department of State. 24 November 2010.
! <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/11/150517.htm>.
 Internet Filtering in Burma: Depth and Implications from the Western Perspective

Kristin Kopach
December 7, 2010

“Question: Why doesn’t Burma have any dentists?

Answer: Because we aren’t allowed to open our mouths. ”
! ! - Reporter for the Democratic Voice of Burma
!
! Burma, a South East Asian country of 50 million inhabitants, has never been a staple of
democracy nor a pinnacle for human or civil rights. As the US State department has so evidently
remarked in its description of Burma, sanctions and limited international co-operation with the
country have occurred since 1968, when the military junta, the State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC), took power, and worsened since 1988, when a pro-democracy demonstration
ended in many casualties 1. The country is considered by the OpenNet Initiative to be pervasively
filtering the internet2 and there has been discussion that a recent Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) attack was the doing of the government in an attempt to ward of media coverage of the
elections3.
! To understand the hype around the 2010 elections in Burma, one must understand it’s
political history. SPDC changed the name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989 and since then
referring to the country as Burma denotes respect for the pre-junta regime and for support of the
democratic opposition; in this paper, I refer to the country as Burma. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is the
face of the democratic opposition in Burma, having won the last elections in 1990, the junta
denied her the ability to take office and placed her under house arrest shortly thereafter 1. She
was released on November 13, 2010, after the November 7 elections.
! The beginning of the election season was marked by the drafting of a new constitution,
concluded in September 2007, in which delegates were barred from free debate, discussion or the
ability to amend. There was then a date scheduled for May 2008 for the popular referendum of
the constitution. However, Cyclone Nargis hit the country in early May, leaving over 22,000
dead and 40,000 missing. The government decided to push back the referendum to the end of the
month, not giving near enough time to settle after the cyclone. The junta announced on May 29,
2008 that the constitution was approved with a 92.48% vote. To add gas to fire, the junta had
passed a series of elections laws which disenfranchised a large portion of the population prior to
the election. The Political Parties Registration Law gave harsh laws governing registration. It
banned the use of funds from the State, religious organizations and foreign countries. Those
prohibited from joining a party are, “members of religious orders, civil servants, persons serving
prison terms, and persons with foreign citizenship”. The Union Election Commission Law states
the guidelines for determining who will be put on Election Commission; one of the guidelines
including having a ““good reputation among the people” by the SPDC”. Lastly and most
controversial, the Hluttaw Election Laws which state that to be eligible to vote, “a person must
be a Burmese citizen at least 18 years old and listed on the constituency’s electoral role.
Foreigners or naturalized citizens of other countries; members of religious orders; and people
serving prison terms, insolvent, or “adjudged to be of unsound mind” are not entitled to vote.” It
also says that 110 of the 330 seats in the parliament are “to be selected by the Commander-in-

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Chief of the Defense Services” 4. The first election in 20 years on November 7th, 2010 marked
simply the legitimization of the junta in the guise of “democracy” 5.
!
Current relations with the West
! From all Western powers, the relations with Burma are similar. The US, UK, European
Union (EU), and Canada all support sanctions, the release of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, pro-democracy
movements, and put pressure upon the government due to its human rights abuses and corrupted
government 1 6 7 8. All of these countries emphatically refer to the country as Burma while only
the EU refers to it as “Burma/Myanmar” 6. Canada and UK together have spent just under $1
billion on humanitarian efforts such as civil society, health, independent media, refugees and
education 7 8 . The obvious distaste for the junta is evident on the US State Department’s website
with such things as value statements regarding the junta’s genuineness in the drafting of the most
recent constitution, the recent changes to election law, the credibility of the government’s
economic statistics, and it’s treatment of political prisoners; all issues which the other countries
point out on their website, some more strongly worded than others. The US site also mentions
Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s name 14 times, other Burmese peoples were mentioned 17 times, most of
the occurrences being either Aung San Suu Kyi’s father or political prisoners 1.

Amount of Internet Filtering and Points of View regarding

! The Open Net Initiative (ONI), an organization dedicated to “investigate, expose and
analyze Internet filtering and surveillance practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion” 9, has
a great interest in the filtering practices of Asia. With a full-on annual Asia project in the works,
the ONI has done its most recent full write up of Burma in 2007. At that time, it found that the
junta engages in both substantial and pervasive filtering techniques. The ONI focused its research
on “independent media, political reform, and human rights sites relating to Myanmar, as well as
free Web-based e-mail services and circumvention tools.”. There are only two service providers
in Burma, one owned by the government and the other is the “infrastructure arm of Myanmar's
Internet system and responsible for blocking content”. The infrastructure arm blocked mostly
sites relating directly to Burma, the state-owned ISP blocked global websites such as
pornography and other websites deemed unsuitable. Curiously, the ONI did not find that social
networking websites are blocked 10.
! The Burmese government also blocks access to internet in ways other than ISP filtering.
The average speed of access is 512KB/s, the speed of dial-up. Services such as GoogleTalk have
just recently been filtered in 2006 10. However, even if it [GoogleTalk] is accessed through a
proxy, it needs at least 512KB/s to function. Most Burmese access the internet from internet
cafés, at the cost of $.30-.50 per hour. With the GDP per capita of $1,10011 , that $.30-.50 can
become quite expensive. Furthermore, these cafés share this 512KB/s line with 10-15 computers,
leaving the average user about 50KB/s, unfathomable by American standards. Therefore, even
with the use of proxies, the government has essentially blocked access with its snail paced
connection speeds, making some websites inoperable12.
! The Western community has taken the stance that access to internet is vital. The US,
according to the various countries’ foreign affairs websites, has taken the strongest stance on
information access. Secretary Clinton has made this clear with her 21st Century Statecraft”
platform which that the use of the internet is pivotal for the evolution of democracy via social
networking, et al 1. The EU Parliament issued a press release at the end of November stating that
among human rights abuses, “censorship of the press and political control of the internet and

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mobile phone network are other serious sources of concern to Parliament” 13. While it is not
implicitly stated on the Canadian foreign affairs website, on the technology front, it is primarily
concerned with the right to freedom of the press, including the ability for those press people in
Burma to access the internet. This is evidenced by the funds spent on these causes as discussed
prior 7.
! For those countries which may not have implicitly expressed a stance on internet filtering
on their government’s websites, it can be implied from the stance of the prominent media outlets,
the viewpoint of at least the country’s citizens. A sophisticated and massive Distributed Denial of
Service (DDoS) attack occurred in Burma yielding to speculation of the junta’s involvement due
to similar internet stifling techniques in 200714 15. There was not much coverage in the major US
newspapers, but many US based technology focused news sources and blogs wrote on the attack
such as the Arbor Security Engineering and Response Team, a company dedicated to network
security 16. It’s blog pointed out that this attack was larger than the one in Georgia in 2007 3. With
less than .5% of internet penetration in Burma, one could be lead to think that the attack was not
focused on the citizens but on those reporters looking to cover the elections, giving motive to the
junta to stage the attack. The BBC in the UK also wrote an article echoing the findings of Arbor
Networks, showing that at least some of the UK public found that the denial of internet was
important17 .
! Stepping away from the attack, there have been articles written on the internet situation in
Burma in general. Aung Sun Suu Kyi herself stated that she wishes to start utilizing social media
and that she applied for internet access at her home18 . She and the other members of her party,
the National League for Democracy (NLD), understand that the best way to contact the youth
and therefore the next generation of democracy advocates is through the use of technology 18.
However, whoever uses the internet in Burma must be careful of what is posted; due to the slow
connection speeds and the fact that the only ISPs are controlled by the government as discussed
earlier, the government can very easily pick up on and pinpoint who is saying what. The
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) is a media news source which operates out of Thailand, as an
online news source, a large part of their focus is on the internet in Burma 19. On the day before
elections, November 6th, the DVB the government banned the sale of unregistered SIM cards,
therefore making activating new cellphones very difficult 20. This ban, on the day before
elections, is an obvious desire to keep the media from reporting on them. Couple that with an
attack on the state run ISP and one can extrapolate that the government tried to do all that it
could to make sure media did not cover the first election in 20 years.

Elections
! No one (at least no one in the West) had the naive thought that the 2010 elections would
bring full blown democracy to Burma. The elections were flawed from the beginning, US
President Obama and Secretary Clinton both expressed their lack of optimism21. Starting with the
Cyclone before the most recent constitutional referendum, the new election laws, the DDoS
attack and sim card ban, and the fact that government made no effort at civic education in terms
of informing the public where to and how to vote in the first elections in 20 years, this election
was marked for failure. The DVB summed up the election news well. Beginning on election day,
it noted that they streets were empty, yet 45-60% of the 29 million (able to participate out of 50
million) people were said to have voted. Many chose not to head to the polls due to fear, “they
were staying home as rumours circulated that bombs would explode”. There was an ominously
great amount of security for a supposedly democratic election, “security was tight in [the former

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capital] Rangoon, with a special unit of police seen wearing red neckties and vests emblazoned
with “Terrorist Squad” loitering outside of one polling booth.22” These rumors, heightened
security, and suspiciously large turn out figures suggest that the government was ready to curtail
anything that would impede its junta’s victory. It is commonly thought that the corrupt junta
engaged in such activities as ballot stuffing, intimidation, advanced voting, and just plain
cheating seeing as the organization which counts the ballots is not nearly independent. The junta
ended up legitimizing their dictatorship by gaining 76.5% of the seats, which was of no surprise
to the Burmese 23 24 25.
! What does this mean for the media and internet filtering? While no one can accurately
predict what will happen, it is likely that not much will change. The government made it a point
to swing the “democratic” elections their way, leaving little optimism that it will all of the
sudden allow free speech on an unfiltered internet. If Aung Sun Suu Kyi, by miracle, is allowed
internet access at her home, the possibility of a democratic uprising is more conceivable due to
the ability to better rally and inform her supporters. The junta had stated that by the end of 2006,
that the 512KB/s internet connection would be available to every township; yet as mentioned
before, still, in 2010, less than 1% of Burmese use the internet.

Conclusion
! Burma, a country of about 50 million people with 1% of those people having access to
the internet is one of the most pervasively filtering countries in the world. Currently, the West
does not view Burma in a favorable light, pummeling the country with sanctions and criticism. A
large part of this is due to the country’s horrendous human rights record and lack of freedom.
The rest of the world views the use of internet as essential to political change, democracy, and
life in general, Burma views it as a threat to the dictatorship. Because of such abuses and lack of
democratic ideals, the country practically begs to be sanctioned causing detriment to their
economy. It seems as though if it cleans up its act, the West will embrace a democratic Burma
with open arms and open wallets. Until then, Burma is destined to failure as it is commonly
assumed that without trade and aid from the West, a country will not survive. There is hope that
there will be another democratic protest in Burma and that the regime will succumb to popular
pressure. Until then, Aung Sun Suu Kyi and the rest of the opposition can only educate the youth
as well as possible.

1 US Department of State. Burma. Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. 28 July 2010. 24 November 2010. !
! <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35910.htm>.

2 Burma (Myanmar). Country Profiles: Burma (Myanmar). OpenNet Initiative. 10 May 2007. 07 December 2010.
! <http://opennet.net/sites/opennet.net/files/myanmar.pdf>

3 Labovitz, Craig. “Attack Severs Burma Internet”. Arbor SERT. 3 November 2010. 7 December 2010.
! <http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2010/11/attac-severs-myanmar-internet/>.

4 U.S. Congressional Research Service.“Burma’s 2010 Elections: Implications of the New Constitution and Election Laws”.
! R41218; 29 April 2010. Congressional Research Service. Martin, Michael F. Congressional Research Digital
! Collection. 7 December 2010. P 6-8.

5 European Parliament. “Burma: MEPs urged not to ease pressure ahead of poll.” External relations: News. 10 November 2010.
! 6 December 2010. <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/
! story_page030-83671-270-09-40-903-20100927STO83659-2010-27-09-2010/default_en.htm>.

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6 European Parliament. “European Parliament resolution of 20 May 2010 on the situation in Burma/Myanmar.” Texts adopted 20
! May 2010. 8 December 2010. <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-
! TA-2010-0196+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN>.

7 Government of Canada. “Canada’s Policy on Burma.” Bilateral Relations: Canada’s Policy on Burma. October 2010. 7 Dec
! 2010. <http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/thailand-thailande/bilateral_relations_bilaterales/canada-burma-
! birmanie.aspx?lang=eng&menu_id=10&menu=L>.

8 United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. “Country Profile: Burma.” 16 Novemebr 2010. 6 December 2010. <http://
! www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/country-profile/asia-oceania/burma?profile=all>.

9 OpenNet Initiative. About ONI. 2010. OpenNet Initiative.7 December 2010. <http://opennet.net/about-oni>.

10 Burma (Myanmar). Country Profiles: Burma (Myanmar). 10 May 2007. OpenNet Initiative. 07 December 2010.
! <http://opennet.net/sites/opennet.net/files/myanmar.pdf>

11 “Burma GDP per capita (PPP).” Burma: Economy. 3 Nov 2010. Index Mundi. 8 December 2010.
! <http://www.indexmundi.com/burma/gdp_per_capita_%28ppp%29.html>.

12 “Burma.” Internet Enemies. 12 Mar 2010. Reporters Without Borders. 5 December 2010.
! <http://en.rsf.org/burma-burma-12-03-2010,36676.html>.

13 European Parliament. “Human rights: Burma, Iraq, Tibet”. News: Press release. 25 November 2010. 7 December 2010.
! <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/en/pressroom/content/20101125IPR00560>.

14 “Burma hit by massive net attack ahead of election”. Technology. 4 November 2010. BBC News. 7 December 2010.
! <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11693214>.

15 Turner, Brian. “Burma taken offline by massive DDoS attack”. 8 November 2010. Tech Watch. 24 November 2010.
! <http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/11/08/burma-taken-offline-by-massive-ddos-attack/>

16 Arbor Security Engineering and Response Team. About. 2009. Arbor SERT. 7 December 2010.
! <http://asert.arbornetworks.com/about/>.

17 “Burma hit by massive net attack ahead of election.” Technology. 4 Nov 2010 : BBC News. 6 December 2010.
! <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11693214>.

18 Fujitani, Takeshi. “Suu Kyi says compromise needed.” 26 Nov 2010. Asahi. 5 December 2010.
! <http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201011250339.html>.

19 Democratic Voice of Burma. About. 2010. Democratic Voice of Burma. 7 December 2010. <http://www.dvb.no/about>.

20 Allchin, Joseph. “SIM card sales blocked in Rangoon.” 6 Nov 2010. Democratic Voice of Burma. 8 December 2010.
! <http://www.dvb.no/elections/sim-card-sales-blocked-in-rangoon/12622>.

21 “Obama: Burma elections ‘neither free nor fair’.” 7 Nov 2010. Washington Times. 8 December 2010.
! <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/7/obama-burma-elections-neither-free-nor-fair/>.

22 Wade, Francis. “Polls close with ’45 to 60%’ voter turnout.” 7 November 2010. Democratic Voice of Burma. 6 Dec 2010.
! <http://www.dvb.no/elections/polls-close-with-%E2%80%9945-to-60%E2%80%99-voter-turnout/12675>.

23 Swe, Tint. “Burma Elections 2010: Cock-And-Bull Story.” 10 November 2010. Eurasia Review. 6 Dec 2010.
! <http://www.eurasiareview.com/opinion/69-opinion/9564-burma-elections-2010-cock-and-bull-story-.html>.

24 Mathieson, David Scott. “Burma’s Elections Towards Realistic Hope.” November 2010. The Morung Express. 6 Dec 2010.
! <http://www.morungexpress.com/columnists/58436.html>.

25 “Final election results announced.”18 November 2010. Democratic Voice of Burma. 6 December 2010.
! <http://www.dvb.no/elections/final-election-results-announced/12942>.

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