“Technical incident” that shut down Internet slowly being solved

The Internet has been accessible again in Burma since 3 November. After been cut off for two days, Internet users can again connect to foreign websites that are not normally blocked. The connection speed is nonetheless very low and it can sometimes take hours to send an email. Burma's two ISPs, Myanmar Posts and Telecoms (MPT) and BaganNet, blamed a “technical incident” on 1 November although it is clear to Reporters Without Borders that there was a political decision to block access, as was the case during the recent saffron revolution, when the two ISPs limited access to an average of three hours a day from 28 September to 13 October. ------------------------------------- 02.11 - Another “technical incident” shuts down Internet again Reporters Without Borders condemns the resumption of Internet censorship by the Burmese military government. Internet connections have been cut again since yesterday. One of the main ISPs, the state-controlled Myanmar Teleport (BaganNet), has again referred to a “technical incident.” “Burma is in the process of creating an Intranet in order to cut itself off from the international community,” the press freedom organisation said. “It is a remarkable coincidence that this so-called technical problem has come on the eve of UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's return tomorrow. Without TV footage and without eye-witness news reports, it will be harder for the international community to evaluate the situation in Burma, but it will be much easier for the military regime to do as it pleases.” Burmese were able to connect to the Internet for an average of only three hours a day from 28 September to 13 October. Thereafter, connections were gradually restored, as reported by an in-depth analysis published by the OpenNet Initiative on 22 October. -------------------------- 29.10 - OpenNet Initiative publishes useful study of Internet shutdown Reporters Without Borders today hailed a report by Stephanie Wang of the OpenNet Initiative on the way the Burmese junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), cut the country's Internet connection on 29 September. Founded by the universities of Harvard, Toronto, Oxford and Cambridge, the OpenNet Initiative studies Internet filtering issues and the social impact of new technologies. Published on 22 October, Wang's report, entitled “Pulling the Plug,” describes the process of Burma's isolation. For two weeks, a news blackout was imposed and most Burmese got their news from satellite TV and radio. Control of the Internet was facilitated by the fact that Burma's only two ISPs, BaganNet and Myanmar Posts and Telecom (MPT), are state offshoots. The OpenNet Initiative report goes into detail about how the shutdown was implemented, with times, ISPs involved and methods used. “The junta attempted to sever the flow of information so that the picture of reality for people on both sides of the Burmese border would remain distorted,” the report says. “As a result, the targets for censorship expanded exponentially from websites that are critical of the junta to any individual with a camera or cell phone and direct or indirect access to the Internet.” The report divides the outage on MPT, the main ISP, into two phases. Phase 1 was a complete shutdown from 29 September to 4 October with one brief period of connectivity on 1 October for six hours starting at 18:35. Phase 2, from 4 to 12 October, consisted of a daily outage lasting all day except from around 22:00 to 4:00 each night. On 7 October, MPT had one extra period of connectivity from 9:40 to 15:37. MPT finally appears to have resumed a stable network from 13 October, with few changes in routing paths. The outage on BaganNet, the smaller ISP, followed a similar pattern, with one exception on the morning of 1 October when its border routers “accidentally” peered with a Singapore-based telecom company and allowed its users to connect to the Internet for around six hours at a time when MPT was permanently out. The report says Internet use increased within the country during the crisis because it was always possible to use censorship-evasion techniques. The Intranet carried on functioning correctly and MPT provided a connection to the sites of military offices (myochitmyanmar.blogspot.com and drlunswe.blogspot.com) and to those sites that offered no political news. Some sites such as dathana.blogspot.com and niknayman.blogspot.com did however post news about the demonstrations during the blackout that were not censored. “Many believe that the breakthrough uses of the Internet over this period have enabled some irreversible gains,” the report says. “Multiple generations of Burmese living locally and abroad have found linkages to each other as blogging became increasingly recognized as a valuable source of information (...) even the vast majority of Burmese without access to or knowledge of the Internet may have benefited from the enduring achievement of a small band of citizen bloggers and journalists.” Burma was ranked 164th out of 169 countries in the Reporters Without Borders 2007 world press freedom index. Since the demonstrations got under way in September, six journalists have been detained and a photographer has disappeared.