<incom> REPORT: "Pulling the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown in Burma"

[Soenke Zehle]

From: 	Patrick McKiernan <pmckiernan at cyber.law.harvard.edu>

Adding to their long history of reports on the study of Internet
filtering, the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has compiled, and today
released, a bulletin on the recent demonstrations in Burma and the
Burmese government's shutdown of the Internet there. The executive
summary of "Pulling the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet
Shutdown in Burma" begins:

/"This bulletin examines the role of information technology, citizen
journalists, and bloggers in Burma and presents a technical analysis of
the abrupt shutdown of Internet connectivity by the Burmese government
on September 29, 2007, following its violent crackdown on protesters
there. Completely cutting international Internet links is rare. Nepal,
which severed all international Internet connections when the King
declared martial law in February 2005, is the only other state to take
such drastic action. Although extreme, the measures taken by the Burmese
government to limit citizens’ use of the Internet during this crisis are
consistent with previous OpenNet Initiative (ONI) findings in
Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Tajikistan, where authorities controlled access
to communication technologies as a way to limit social mobilization
around key political events. What makes the Burmese junta stand out,
however, is its apparent goal of also preventing information from
reaching a wider international audience..."/

As the Berkman Center celebrates its 10th anniversary, we are examining
where we've been over the past 10 years in order to inform the
trajectory of the Internet. One of Berkman's flagship projects, ONI is
conducted in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab,
the University of Cambridge’s Advanced Network Research Group at the
Cambridge Security Programme, and the Oxford Internet Institute. Since
its 2002 inception, ONI has written over 50 reports, regional overviews,
and case studies. They released the first-ever global survey of Internet
filtering at the Internet Filtering Conference at Oxford University in
May 2007; Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Internet Politics,
an MIT Press book based on their analysis of these seminal studies, will
be released in Spring 2008.

"Pulling the Plug" builds upon past ONI research to contextualize the
recent technical and political developments in Burma.  In turn, the
bulletin has implications for the role of information technology and
citizen media on democracy and economic growth, which are among the
topics that will occupy the Berkman Center over the next decade.

The full report is available at: <http://opennet.net/research/bulletins/013>

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Patrick McKiernan
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
(617) 384-9100 - O
(617) 894-1722 - C
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu

Berkman at 10 - celebrating 10 years of exploring cyberspace, sharing in
its study, and pioneering its development.