The Hindu Business Line : The Web way

It is eventful times in neighbouring Myanmar, where the ruling junta has been told by more than a cross-section of the population that it is unpopular. Protests spilled on to the streets, leading to violence against the demonstrators by the army.

This is no doubt the usual pattern of dissent in many military-controlled countries. The most distinctive feature of current happenings in Myanmar is, however, the capacity of a closed society to tell the rest of the world of what is happening inside the country.

The medium of communication that has come in handy to protesters has been the Internet, one that had already been greatly curtailed by the ruling class.

This should bring home the point that controlling means of communication is futile in the present times of efficient global networks, especially when your opponents are highly motivated.

Net scene

Believe it or not, Myanmar has just two Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication (MPT) and Bagan Cybertech (BC), a semi-private organisation. According to a 2005 study by Open Net Initiative (ONI), a collaboration between Harvard, Oxford and Toronto Universities, there were just 15,000 subscribers to each.

The numbers may have gone up since then, but cyber cafes in Yangon and Mandalay, the principal cities, are the main avenues through which an average citizen gains access to the Net.

Most are slow dial-up connections, and broadband is available only to businesses. MPT owns an undersea cable (45 mbps) and a satellite connection (15 mbps), both grounded in Hong Kong, and it shares them with BC. In addition to these, a few Embassies and UN bodies have their own Internet connections.

The 1996 Computer Science Development Law requires compulsory registration with MPT of all Net-enabled computers. The 2000 Regulations prohibit hacking as well as publication of certain kind of material over the Net. Further, the Regulations make it illegal for anyone with a registered Net connection to allow others to use it. Also, users of cyber cafes will have to register themselves before accessing the Internet.

Perhaps most ridiculous is the requirement that those who run such cafes will have to take a screen shot of every computer once in five minutes! CDs containing such shots will have to be delivered to the authorities at periodic intervals.

Finally, several filters are used by the government to shut out a number of Web sites, including those who offer Web-based e-mail.

Egged on, perhaps, by commercial considerations, a US firm, Fortinet, had sold its effective Fortiguard Web-filtering software to enable the Myanmar authorities to resort to this practice.

(Lately, however, the company has claimed that it did not directly sell the software to Myanmar and that it had withdrawn the product from that country because the latter had attracted sanctions from the US Government.)

Glite site

The curbs have spawned various methods to avoid censorship. This is why, in the first few days of the recent agitation, the world could get extensive accounts of major events, along with pictures.

As I write this comes news of a total shut-down of the Internet. Given the current levels of motivation and technical skills, those who are opposed to the military regime will still be able to communicate with the rest of the world.

What has come in handy are foreign-hosted proxy servers that are mind boggling in terms of number.

Proxy sites and encrypted e-mail accounts and the unusual location of some Internet cafes have also been of help. It is said that the most popular proxy site in the country is Glite.sayni.net, popularly known as Glite.

It has an India-based administrator who claims that the programme resides on hundreds of private and public servers. This has incidentally helped access to G-mail accounts that had earlier been interfered with.

The government moved in to block three particular Glite versions, only to provoke more unidentifiable sites! It is believed that Glite has been designed in such a way that it can evade indexing by search sites. These are, however, only claims that need to be verified.

bloggers

Perhaps the most well-known blogger of recent times is Myanmar-born Ko Htike, who operates from London.

Armed with a laptop, he has converted what was once a literary-blog into a political weapon. Pictures and news published by him have been carried extensively by BBC and other channels.

There is information that determined bloggers have been efficient in circulating guidelines to others on how to evade detection through foreign-based proxy sites. Their prospects for success are rated high by many who know Myanmar. This optimism is based on an assessment that the authorities there lack the skill and sophistication of their Chinese counterparts.

Apart from the smartness of the bloggers, one has also to take into account the fact that ISPs have been inconsistent in performing their tasks.

Their attention has been mostly on international sites, leaving regional sites for exploitation by those who are opposed to government.

Impractical

What is happening in Myanmar should impress on governments elsewhere that blocking the Internet to put down dissent is out-of-tune with the times.

It is also being impractical with the growing phenomenon of undetectable proxy servers, many of which have been found to be extremely dynamic in being able to change their configuration and addresses at astonishing speed.

Encrypted mail using freeware GPG keys also hoodwinks ISPs entrusted with the task of censorship.

It is also the experience that you can slow down the Net but not totally block it. Apart from satellite links with foreign ISPs, satellite phones are also there in plenty to speed up communication.

Further useful are cell-phones, which are smuggled out of a country with pictures of important events that can be transmitted through the Net later on from across the border.

Many of us talk all the time about making the Internet more and more secure so that it remains a powerful medium to promote knowledge. But when governments manipulate it, discussion of security becomes meaningless.

In the final analysis, what may be lawful from the point of view of a State may not necessarily be ethical or practical.

This is the thought that comes to my mind whenever there is a clamour in India for policing the Net. Short-sightedness actuated by political considerations here can prove ruinous.

A State found tinkering with the Net for dubious purposes will only be encouraging marauders out there in cyberspace for personal gains.

The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.

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