Info cyberwars – The dark side of tech in the Myanmar coup

Info cyberwars – The dark side of tech in the Myanmar coup

An anonymous photo from Facebook shows protesters using mobile phone lights in a dawn demonstration against the military coup. (Photo by Handout / FACEBOOK / AFP)



Since democratically-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was deposed by the military in Myanmar in early February, more than 200 people have been killed in mass protests which the coup forces have been trying to suppress with increasingly violent tactics.


And accompanying the escalating violence has been the mounting use of technological means to stamp out protest voices and to silence dissidents who were sending out reports on the Myanmar coup via social media and other online channels. Residents in the cities like Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay have faced repeated internet blackouts in the past two months since the election results were tossed out, and now human rights groups are igniting more concerns on a looming ‘digital dictatorship’ as the military government relies on some advanced tech to fuel their control over their population.


In the cities, where hundreds of CCTV cameras had been installed as part of a project to improve governance and curb crime known as Safe City, humanitarian groups like Human Rights Watch have raised concerns that these cameras might be installed with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with facial recognition biometrics and computer vision for scanning and identifying faces and vehicle license plates, including to alert authorities if a face or vehicles on a watch list comes up.


Most of the infrastructure for the Safe City initiative was supplied by Chinese technology firm Huawei, who have been embroiled in their own cyberwars myanmar