Myanmar’s new military government bans Facebook
- Reference: 1612398257
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/04/myanmar_facebook_ban/
- Source link:
The local arm of multinational mobile carrier Telenor [1]said it has received an order from the nation’s Ministry of Transport and Communications and has enacted it “while expressing grave concerns regarding breach of human rights.”
[2]
Newswire Reuters ’ Myanmar reporter Hnin Zaw [3]posted a notice from Myanmar’s Ministry of Transport and Communications that imposed a ban until February 7th.
Using optical character recognition and online translation tools, The Register surmises that the order says the ban is needed to stop the spread of fake news.
[4]
Censorship-watching organisation NetBlocks says it has detected the effects of the ban.
Update: Facebook products are now restricted on multiple internet providers in [5]#Myanmar as operators comply with an apparent blocking order.
Data show variations by provider, with MPT targeting a wider range of the company's services than Telenor 📉
📰 [6]https://t.co/Jgc20OBk27 [7]pic.twitter.com/RkdE2mdWFQ — NetBlocks (@netblocks) [8]February 3, 2021
Facebook has reportedly put Myanmar on a watchlist, in order to detect and delete content urging violence.
The Social Network™ is very widely used in Myanmar so the ban will stop the spread of all news and make it hard for citizens to communicate.
Locals may already be routing around the block: the trending domains report on Cloudflare’s internet radar also shows surging traffic to TikTok and the VK.com messaging service.
Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year [9]READ MORE
[10]
Ironically, the coup has also seen some communications restrictions lifted in Myanmar, including those imposed on a town in a district that is home to large numbers of the Rohingya ethnic minority that seeks the creation of an autonomous region and has been the subject of violent suppression. Telenor on Tuesday [11]announced that it had received an order to restore services in eight towns and intends to comply as soon as it can. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.telenor.com/directive-to-block-social-media-service/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YBt-asKDflb-mF4ot7EJmQAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://twitter.com/hninyadanazaw/status/1357051281886433280
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YBt-asKDflb-mF4ot7EJmQAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://twitter.com/hashtag/Myanmar?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[6] https://t.co/Jgc20OBk27
[7] https://t.co/RkdE2mdWFQ
[8] https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1357103754059866113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/internet_blackouts_myanmar_india/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YBt-asKDflb-mF4ot7EJmQAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.telenor.com/network-restored-in-eight-townships-in-myanmar/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Somebody finally did it
Because 98.7% of the messages on it would be Nabokov-esq porn and the other 128% would be conspiracy nuts explaining how Jewish space lasers are responsible for burning their toast.
Prosecute Min Aung Hlaing
If Min Aung Hlaing is suppressing communications, it means he hasn't suppressed dissent yet, so they're not the new government, he's just a self declared leader, lacking any legitimacy. Don't use the term "government" for a self declared leader. Aung San Suu Kyi is the elected leader, she is the government.
Just because some fat old man declares himself the rightful winner of an election, and tries to shut down "fake news" media for saying otherwise, doesn't mean you have to follow him, or his co-conspirators.
80% voted for democracy in Myanmar, that's a large part of the military too. Is he even the legitimate leader of the military? She was elected, so she appoints the Generals, he isn't the leader of the military, he has no legitimacy even to wear that uniform.
Hold a show trial of Min Aung Hlaing for his attempted coup, they should shut down everything connected to Myanmar, no 'business as usual', shut it down, declare Min Aung Hlaing illegitimate, personalize the coup to him. If they hand him over and the country can open up again.
Also US Democrats, see the lesson here? Aung San Suu Kyi didn't have guards loyal to her, she didn't take care of her personal security independent of the government. If the Jan 6th plotters had got their way, that would be you. You would have been detained by Trump's insurrection mob, while the Capitol police had been ordered to stand down by Christopher Miller, Trump's last minute appointee just after he lost the election:
https://twitter.com/earlymodjustice/status/1355593228490321922
It was your own personal protection guards that saved you. You were one bullet away from a successful coup with Trump and his Republican co-conspirators replacing the Electoral College votes with the Republican shadow list of Electoral College votes. So don't ignore all the co-conspirators that played their part in that. Not just Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, but the groups that submitted Republican fake electoral college lists too, the propaganda groups that pumped up the lies with sock puppet Facebook and Twitter accounts. They'll try again if they get away with it.
If Aung San Suu Kyi had her loyal guard, and a shootout had happened, the foot soldiers would have to decide between following her, or following the coup plotter and that test would have resulted in her ousting the military coup plotter, since clearly 80% voted for her.
Democracy is the only legitimate leadership. *We* the people, not *you* the fat old liar.
Somebody finally did it
And to think I was thinking military coups are always such a bad thing. At least someone has the courage to turn off the privacy invader for once.
In all seriousness, what we really should create is a reliable, single-standard, easy-to-use encrypted mesh communication app that also does centralized communication. Existing mesh apps are usually tricky to get working or have such a small footprint that nobody bothers to use them. Also, who has the foresight to install one before something happens making it useful? Imagine what it would be like if Signal had a mesh option. People would use it normally because it had a guaranteed message delivery system, and if access was cut, either to Signal's servers or generally, there would still be the ability to communicate locally. Especially if there was a method to send messages through a node with connectivity should that be available. Not that Signal is the only available app for this purpose. The technical challenges are substantial, but the benefits for a situation like this one could be similarly large.