Myanmar junta demanded telcos activate phone interception tools – and we refused, says Telenor

Norwegian mobile carrier Telenor has revealed one reason it is quitting Myanmar is that the nation's ruling junta wanted it to intercept calls carried on its network. Myanmar's democratically elected government was usurped by a military junta in February 2021. Internet blackouts followed as the military sought to limit …

[sebacoustic]

Would appear that Myanmar military junta want to run a phone network in which they can snoop on everyone. So Telenor doesn't want anything to do with that and neither does any other decent company: no surprise they have to find a proper scumbag buyer. Well either that, or not have a telco at all. Presumably in Myanmar now everyone knows not to use phone network for anything sensitive.

[John Robson]

"Presumably in Myanmar now everyone knows not to use phone network for anything sensitive."

And hopefully that message is loud and clear in this... Because, yes - they either close down, or sell to someone who will capitulate (or I suppose have their local offices invaded)

[elsergiovolador]

in Myanmar now everyone knows not to use phone network for anything sensitive

Isn't that true for all networks though?

[Snowy]

Aye all networks everywhere, just someplace they have to ask a friendly Judge if they can, and others just sent up a dummy base station and intercept without Judicial oversite.

[Potemkine!]

Bravo to Telenor. It's rare that a company puts human rights above profits.

Next, regarding Hezbollah, one should not necessarily trust the US State Department who acts here as an Israeli proxy. I don't intend to say Hezbollah is made of nice guys, far from that, but it's an important political force in Lebanon, and this mainly because of the invasion and occupation of Lebanon by Israel. They cannot be excluded from any solution to stabilize Lebanon.

[elsergiovolador]

Low pay

Sad reality is that given how engineers are in general paid poorly, it probably won't take a long time to gather a team of contractors to setup a network.

Respect for not giving in to authoritarians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slight nag: read ANY telecomms license

The key question I have is if the group that wanted intercept was deemed the legitimate government because nice or not nice, the ability to intercept is a mandatory clause in every single telecomms license I have ever read. Yes, even in the so-called "developed" countries, and we're not even talking about the free-for-all US approach either.

Of course, the ability to intercept anything but faxes, straight voice calls and SMS has been considerably stifled by the emergence of secured VoIP and encrypted SMTP and messaging, but the baseline requirement is still very much part of the license. If you want a government license to milk the population (which is IMHO what a telecomms license really is, but I digress), intercept is AFAIK still a non-negotiable part of the picture.

[Velv]

Will the change of ownership of the network reach the people, and will they be able to switch to another network, which presumably is operating the spyware if they're still operating?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it wrote the value of the network off, why then *sell* it to anyone? Send staff into the data centre with hatchets and petrol :/

[My-Handle]

A very dangerous move if you're dealing with a military government. Said staff, and likely anyone near them, would likely be detained and charged with treason or something similar for what amounts to a co-ordinated attack against national infrastructure.

Given that this is a government that has shot unarmed protestors, the company would likely be sacrificing the lives of their staff for no good purpose.

[Paul Smith]

The other half of interception is the tracking of location data. The junta does not need to know what a suspect says if they know everybody the suspect talks to and who they talk to in turn.

[John Savard]

Unclear

Well, of course the buyer will have to do what the Burmese government asks of it. Otherwise, it would have to sell too.

[Robert Carnegie]

Not to say there aren't problems here, but the U.S. government will declare you a terrorist if the President doesn't like your cheese. Just ask Alex James. :-)