Read all about IT. This publication has two excellent new articles on IT or information technology. The future of digital activism depends of keeping ahead of trends.
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Mobile Phone User Woes In Burma
By KYAW THEIN KHA
Irrawaddy
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The prices of prepaid GSM phone cards manufactured by Burmese tycoon Tay Za's Htoo Trading Co Ltd have shot up on Yangon's black market, according to mobile phone shops and users in Rangoon.
“Prepaid GSM phone cards are officially priced at 20 and 50 Foreign Exchange Certificates [one FEC is approximately equal to one US dollar] but we have to pay a extra 5000 Kyat [US $5] to actually get a card,” said Myat Soe, a prepaid GSM phone card user in Yangon who spoke with The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.
“We don't know whether the cards are fake or real until we make a call,” he said, complaining that fake cards were also being sold.
Prepaid GSM sim cards were first introduced by Central Marketing Co., Ltd at the Yadanabon Cyber City Exhibition in Pyin Oo Lwin on 12th Feb, 2008. The company is a subsidiary of Htoo Trading and had been granted the right as the sole agent for the sales of one-time-use SIM cards for GSM phones.
Htoo Trading set the prices of the cards at FEC 20 and 50, but they are not available at these prices on the black market.
“The 20 and 50 FEC sim cards are out of stock unless you purchase a GSM or a CDMA [Code Division Multiple Access] handset,” said a mobile phone seller in Rangoon.
GSM devices start from five thousand kyats ($5) and CDMA units from seven thousand kyat (7$), he said, but unlike the 50 FEC cards, buyers of the 20 FEC cards face a one-time use restriction and must change their number each time they buy a new card.
Staff from Mobile King of Rangoon said: “FEC 50 prepaid cards are out of stock, but you can buy the FEC 20 Sim cards by paying an extra 5500 kyat (S5.50). An outgoing call on a prepaid card costs (US) 30 cents per minute and incoming calls cost 5 cents per minute. The FEC 50 cards can be used for three months from validation, but the FEC 20 cards can only be used for one month.”
Prepaid GSM phone cards users in Rangoon and Mandalay are not happy because of the surcharges and fakes.
To obtain the prepaid cards foreigners must show their passport and the Burmese citizens their IDs.
All communication services in Burma are under the control of Ministry of Myanmar Post and Telecommunication (MPT), which announced that it will provide CDMA 800 Mega Hertz fixed line services in Rangoon and Mandalay. CDMA services, which are being offered to the public for 500,000 Kyat ($507), are mainly expected to be taken up by companies.
The day after the Ministry's announcement, Information Technology Central Services (ITCS), a subsidiary of Burmese tycoon Tay Za’s Htoo Trading, began selling the service.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18001
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COVER STORY
The Coming Cyber War
By WAI MOE AND DAVID PAQUETTE
MARCH, 2010 - VOLUME 18 NO.3
The Burmese generals are moving to take control of the information superhighway as they gear up for a cyber war with dissidents
More than 2,000 computer enthusiasts turned up recently at an IT (Information Technology) forum in Rangoon, making it the largest ever gathering in Burma devoted to computer technology. Like IT conventions the world over, computer geeks schmoozed endlessly about the latest innovations while distributors browsed for new products and sales reps enticed clients into their booths.
Internet users in Rangoon (Photo: AFP)
The IT forum, known as “BarCamp Yangon,” took place on Jan. 23-24 in the imposing Myanmar Info-Tech business park not far from Inya Lake. The event attracted both Burmese and foreign sponsors.
“The forum was a chance to discuss and witness Burma’s progress in the IT world,” said a teenage IT student who attended. “You could see and hear something different in every room—from Unicode to IT security to open source. It had everything.”
But behind the scenes of Burma’s largest IT forum, those in power were planning a division of IT spoils, while at the same time establishing national security protocols and centralizing governmental surveillance of the Internet.
As IT assumes a larger role in Burma, a younger, more computer-savvy generation is coming to the fore—led by the scions of the military generals.
More than 2,000 computer enthusiasts turned up recently at an IT (Information Technology) forum in Rangoon, making it the largest ever gathering in Burma devoted to computer technology. Like IT conventions the world over, computer geeks schmoozed endlessly about the latest innovations while distributors browsed for new products and sales reps enticed clients into their booths.
The IT forum, known as “BarCamp Yangon,” took place on Jan. 23-24 in the imposing Myanmar Info-Tech business park not far from Inya Lake. The event attracted both Burmese and foreign sponsors.
“The forum was a chance to discuss and witness Burma’s progress in the IT world,” said a teenage IT student who attended. “You could see and hear something different in every room—from Unicode to IT security to open source. It had everything.”
But behind the scenes of Burma’s largest IT forum, those in power were planning a division of IT spoils, while at the same time establishing national security protocols and centralizing governmental surveillance of the Internet.
As IT assumes a larger role in Burma, a younger, more computer-savvy generation is coming to the fore—led by the scions of the military generals.
A wireless Internet connection was provided for the two-day forum by the event’s main sponsor, Redlink Communications, which is owned by Aung Thet Mann and Toe Naing Mann, sons of the regime’s No. 3 general, “Thura” Shwe Mann.
Aung Thet Mann is also on the board of directors at the Htoo Group of Companies, run by tycoon Tay Za, a personal friend of several leading generals, including junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe. Both Aung Thet Mann and Tay Za are targeted by EU and US sanctions.
Than Shwe’s first and favorite grandson, Nay Shwe Thway Aung [see sidebar p.13], is also heavily involved in the growing IT market.
In 2006, while still at high school, Nay Shwe Thway Aung was presented with the directorship of Yadanabon Cyber City, a huge IT center based in Pyin Oo Lwin, about 65 km (40 miles) east of Mandalay [see sidebar p.15].
“Businessmen here are saying that Than Shwe handed over the Myanmar football league and Yadanabon Cyber City to his grandson just because he is football crazy and a computer geek,” said a Rangoon businessman who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Nay Shwe Thway Aung, who accompanies the junta chief to many official events and openings, gave his grandfather a tour of the cyber park on Dec. 10. Joint chief of staff of the Burmese armed forces Shwe Mann also joined the inspection tour that day, as did several other leading generals, including SPDC Secretary-1 Gen Tin Aung Myint Oo and Chief of Military Ordnance Lt-Gen Tin Aye.
Minister of Industry (1) Aung Thaung’s son, Ne Aung, who is managing director of IGE Co Ltd, was on hand to offer a presentation on Web portals that his company had designed for government use.
IGE is a massive enterprise which not only invests in IT, but also in the oil and gas sector, as well as controlling various large-scale import-export concessions.
Aung Thaung and his sons and family
are on the EU visa blacklist and are sanctions-listed with the EU, though not the US. Aung Thaung’s other son, Pyi Aung, is also on the board of directors at IGE and is married to junta No. 2 Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye’s daughter.
Interest in computer technology is nothing new among Burma’s military rulers. In the late 1990s, former Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt broke the monopoly of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT) when he appointed his son, Ye Naing Win, as director of Bagan Cyber Tech, the first private Internet provider in the country.
When his father was ousted from power in October 2004, Ye Naing Win was arrested and ownership of Bagan Cyber Tech was transferred to a consortium of fresh military cronies who changed its name to Myanmar Teleport.
In taking over from Bagan Cyber Tech, the Myanmar Teleport group also assumed the dual responsibility of monitoring political dissidents and journalists and relating that information to the Military Intelligence Service.
But it was not until the Saffron Revolution of September 2007 that the necessity of controlling cyberspace was brought home to the military elite.
The junta endured international condemnation when news, photos and video footage were leaked via the Internet by dissident bloggers and citizen journalists. Images taken on mobile phones of Burmese soldiers attacking Buddhist monks intensified pressure on the regime’s leaders.
The Burmese authorities have enforced a strict clampdown on Internet access ever since.
Internet café owners across the country were recently summoned to the offices of their local Township Peace and Development Council and told they must keep detailed records of everyone who frequents their shops.
The vast majority of Internet café users in Burma are students. Paying an average of 400 kyat ($0.40) per hour for use of a computer—up to 1,000 kyat per hour during power cuts when generators are employed—they mostly play video games, chat online or use the Net to study—not unlike young people in any other country.
However, now they must register, give their names and addresses, and disclose to the authorities what they are using the Internet for.
The MPT recently announced plans to issue digital certificates, or public key certificates, a security tool for companies and private users. According to the Burmese IT journal Time To Time, the certificates will be issued from the offices of Yadanabon-Teleport, a joint venture between the MPT and some private companies, the majority stakeholder being the seemingly ubiquitous Tay Za.
Opinion is divided among Burmese IT technicians about digital certificates. In most countries they offer users a high degree of cyber security. But in Burma, many Internet users are afraid they will stumble across Web sites such as the BBC in the course of their studies and be caught and branded “enemies of the state.”
“Digital certificates will create a better online environment for Internet users,” said a computer programmer in Rangoon whose hobby is blogging. “Let’s say you get e-mail and you are unsure who sent it or if it has a virus. You won’t know unless you can read the digital certificate.”
Another IT technician disagreed, saying,“With digital certificates, the government can follow whatever information it wants and find out who is accessing it. Then one day, you get a knock at your door ...”
Under Section 33 (a) of the Electronics Act, Internet users in Burma face draconian sentences for sharing information the government deems sensitive or subversive—a rather wide net in Burmese terms. [see box p.12]
In January and February, Internet connections across the country slowed down until they crashed. For a few days in early February, Google Talk, apopular chat program, was the only service available.
Yadanabon-Teleport announced that technical problems had occurred and that “normal service” would be resumed as soon as possible. Inside sources in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy that the Internet shutdown was related directly to the government transferring much of its hardware to Pyin Oo Lwin ahead of the planned election.
“The military authorities want to make sure they have a command center set up in advance of the election,” a reporter in Rangoon said. “They know that ordinary citizens and dissidents will try to breech their security during the election by sending reports and footage to foreign and exiled media groups.”
Not only do Burma’s military authorities block information going out of the country, but also coming in. Many Web sites are banned, mostly those belonging to respected international agencies such as Amnesty International, as well as those of exiled Burmese media groups—Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), Mizzima News and The Irrawaddy—that are critical of the military junta.
During the height of the monk-led demonstrations in Rangoon in September 2007, professional hackers infected The Irrawaddy Web site with a Trojan virus. Sophisticated cyber-attacks were also launched on other Burmese media in exile, including DVB and New Era Journal. Then, in September 2008, The Irrawaddy Web site was shut down for three days due to a “distributed denial-of-service,” or DDoS, attack that jammed the site with fake traffic.
According to 2009 data collected by Internet monitors Nielson and the UN’s International Communication Union, between 24 and 27 percent of people in China, Thailand and Vietnam use or have used the Internet. In Burma, the figure is just 0.2 percent. And the few that do are regarded with suspicion and monitored with increasing rigor.
Burma’s bloggers and dissidents will have to find new and innovative ways to circumvent the authorities’ tight rein in this election year.
Sources say that miniature cameras, or “spy cams,” have been distributed to dissidents across the country in recent months by NGOs and media groups. These can be used, for example, to capture electoral irregularities and voter intimidation.
Many bloggers will reroute through proxy servers—which are located outside the country—to access restricted sites. Of course, the regime’s IT team will be actively tracking such proxies and will try to block access to them.
Whatever the risks and restrictions, many people in Burma will be determined to report injustices to the outside world. Citizen journalists, who did so much to further the cause of the Saffron Revolution in 2007, will be called on to act again.
The stage is set for a cyber war.
The Electronic Transactions Law No 5/ 2004 (Apr. 30, 2004)
Chapter XII: Offences and Penalties
33. Whoever commits any of the following acts by using electronic transactions technology shall, on conviction, be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine:
(a) doing any act detrimental to the security of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national culture.
(b) receiving or sending and distributing any information relating to secrets of the security of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national culture.
De facto application:
Nay Phone latt
Blogger Nay Phone Latt, 28, was sentenced to 20 years and six months imprisonment in November 2008 for Internet-related offenses. One of his alleged crimes was storing a cartoon of Than Shwe in his e-mail.
Later that month, Burma’s best-known comedian, Zarganar, and Ashin Gambira, one of the Buddhist monk leaders during the 2007 Saffron Revolution, were sentenced to 45 years and 68 years respectively on a series of trumped-up charges.
One of the “crimes” levele
d at Zarganar was that he was in possession of three apparently subversive CDs—two with footage of Than Shwe’s daughter’s wedding and the cyclone disaster, and one containing the Hollywood movie Rambo IV, which depicts Burmese army atrocities against the ethnic Karen.
The Young Pretender
Nay Shwe Thway Aung (right) lines up beside Hidetoshi Nakata at an exhibition football match in 2007.
Yadanabon Cyber City, Burma’s “Silicon Valley” and the government’s Internet control center, is run by a teenager who happens to be Than Shwe’s grandson.
Nay Shwe Thway Aung has various reputations. As the first and favorite grandson of Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the slim, bespectacled 18-year-old is already one of the country’s biggest celebrities––although he invariably makes headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Nicknamed “Pho La Pyae” (Full Moon), Nay Shwe Thway Aung currently attends Yangon Technological University where he is known as a low achiever. Fellow students have been quoted as saying he is an ill-tempered snob and he has been known to lay down the law to his professors, who wisely give him a wide berth.
When Japanese football star Hidetoshi Nakata came to Burma in 2007 for an exhibition match, Than Shwe’s grandson persuaded the national team coaches to let him play despite his complete lack of football skills.
His most notorious escapades were played out last year when he reputedly had a brief affair with a Burmese supermodel, Wut Hmone Shwe Yee. When she tried to break off the relationship, Nay Shwe Thway Aung and his friends allegedly kidnapped her and held her in a house for several days.
Then, in September, he was the subject of the gossip mills again when he and some accomplices reportedly trashed a café in Rangoon owned by a rival from another military family.
Nay Shwe Thway Aung allegedly has influence over an unruly gang of teenagers in Rangoon called “Sin Zway” (Elephant Tusk). He was also recently at the center of a minor drugs scandal, according to exiled media reports.
None of this has dampened the affection of his grandfather. Many observers say it’s no secret he is being groomed to play a leading role in the country’s IT revolution.
Pyin Oo Lwin: The Generals’ Silicon Fortress
Snr-Gen Than Shwe (center) takes a tour of the Yadanabon Cyber City with his grandson, Nay Shwe Thway Aung (wearing a white shirt and dark tie). (Photo: MNA)
Visitors to Pyin Oo Lwin often take a leisurely horse-drawn carriage ride along the eucalyptus and bougainvillea-lined streets and a walk around the botanical gardens.
In many respects, not much has changed from the late 19th century when British colonialists founded the town as a military outpost from which to invade Shan State. Finding the cool breezes and pine forests to their liking, several British officers moved their families to the sleepy town, which they named Maymyo, meaning “May’s Town,” in honor of Col. May, the commander of the Bengal regiment.
The hill station soon became a bustling hub for British administrators, Gurkha soldiers, teak loggers, Sikh traders and American Baptist missionaries.
One hundred years later, Maymyo, renamed Pyin Oo Lwin, is a favorite weekend getaway resort for Burma’s elite. Snr-Gen Than Shwe owns a summer house nearby.
It still has a military component, too. As the home of the Defense Services Academy, Burma’s most prestigious military school, it is where many of the top generals graduated, including Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, Gen Shwe Mann and Quartermaster General Gen Tin Aung Myint Oo.
It is perhaps with a degree of nostalgia that the junta has made Pyin Oo Lwin its Internet hub.
Founded in 2007, Yadanabon Cyber City is a 10,000-acre IT park with convention centers, research stations, a training center and hundreds of commercial outlets.
The estimated cost of the first phase of the project was 3.8 billion kyat (US $3.8 million), with plans drawn up to increase its commercial potential and include a residential area complete with marketplaces, health facilities, cinemas, sporting facilities and a police station. According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, official sources in Burma estimate the total cost will reach $22 million.
The New Light of Myanmar reported in December that 19 companies have invested in Yadanabon. Most have strong military links, such as Myanmar Teleport, IGE Co Ltd, Htoo Trading Co and Myanmar Info-Tech. Three foreign companies, Alcatel Shanghai Bell and ZTE from China and CBOSS from Russia, are also helping to finance the project.
Pyin Oo Lwin now has the best Internet connection in Burma and stands as Burma’s nascent electronic crossroads between China, India and Thailand.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/print_article.php?art_id=17923
