Inside the Digital Siege
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“There is a person behind every piece of policy,” says Nandar, a senior digital security expert at DigiSec Lab, reflecting on Myanmar’s transformation into a digital prison since the 2021 military coup. Alongside her colleagues—researcher and safety trainer Vox, journalist and consultant Myat, and political researcher Candle—she sketches the contours of a country where the Internet, once a symbol of connection, has become a machinery of surveillance. Each expert in turn describes a different layer of the same siege: Nandar dissects the state’s digital weapons, Vox retraces the collapse of online freedom, Myat explains how journalists adapt to survive, and Candle argues for an ethics of protection in research. Together, they reveal how technology, once a tool of liberation, now enforces silence in Myanmar’s post-coup landscape.
Nandar begins by describing the “digital siege” not so much as a blackout but as creeping paralysis. She explains that Myanmar’s Internet still functions, but access to the wider world is filtered and monitored. What distinguishes Myanmar’s experience from China’s Great Firewall, she says, is its incremental nature. Instead of cutting people off overnight, the junta tightens control layer by layer. “The outer layer filters what you can access,” she explains. “The middle layer watches what you do, and the inner layer makes you afraid to even try anything.” The result an Internet that appears to work but no longer grants freedom.
From this framework emerges what she calls the “three digital weapons of governance.” The first of these is deep packet inspection (DPI), “a microscope of Internet traffic” that allows the state to open and read the contents of any data packet passing through telecom systems. The second is civilian traffic logging, an invisible layer of surveillance at the network core that tracks users’ activities, session durations, and app usage, building a behavioral map of citizens. “Technically,” she says, “it really looks like a national CCTV system for the Internet.” The third weapon is the 2025 Cybersecurity Law, which forces digital service providers to store user data inside the country and surrender it on demand. Nandar notes that this law shifts the regime’s focus from individuals to platforms: the state now seeks to control intermediaries that hold masses of personal information.
These three weapons together have crippled independent media, civil society, and youth activism and resistance. Over 150 journalists have been detained, she says, and many others have fled to border areas where slow connections, blocked websites, and constant monitoring make it nearly impossible to report from afar. Yet she also points out that Myanmar’s independent media continue to resist, finding creative ways to publish and share truth despite the dangers. “The logic of a digital siege is not to switch off the Internet entirely,” she says, “but to make people [silenced] under constant observation.” In that silence, she insists, the first victims are those who depend on the Internet to document, organize, and communicate.
Vox, a digital safety researcher who trains activists and civil society groups, enters the discussion where Nandar leaves off. His testimony unfolds as both history and a personal narrative. He recalls the night of February 1, 2021, when the military seized power and plunged the country into its first Internet blackout. “People were lining up in front of ATMs,” he remembers. “We had no idea how to deal with it. It was very unreal.” Over the following weeks, blackouts gave way to nightly “Internet curfews,” a uniquely Myanmar phenomenon. During these hours, communications vanished, and police raids swept neighborhoods while no one could send warnings.
Vox describes the broader collapse of digital trust. Companies once expected to uphold international standards, such as Telenor under Europe’s GDPR, abandoned users. “We had Telenor, a European company,” he says bitterly, “and they actually sold us out!” With no reliable protection, activists turned to encryption apps—Signal, Telegram, VPNs—but soon realized that technology alone could not keep them safe. Even encrypted apps exposed users through phone numbers and metadata; SIM card registration linked every account to a real identity. When a member of a Signal group was arrested, their contacts could be traced through stored numbers. Telegram, though more flexible, was equally dangerous: the same platform used by activists was exploited by soldiers spreading propaganda and targeting opponents.
In response, Vox and his peers learned to live like spies. Every call was treated as a potential trap. Every unverified contact might be an informant. He describes the psychological toll—sleepless nights waiting for a colleague’s codeword reply, moments of panic that later turned out to be false alarms. “It was just bizarre,” he says. “This is ‘1984,’ to be honest! Every space, physical and digital, is being monitored.” By 2025, he concludes, the combination of legal repression, advanced surveillance tools, and mandatory conscription has created an environment where young people could not “live comfortably” inside their own country. What was once a symbol of freedom has become a totalitarian grid.
For Myat, a journalist with more than a decade in the media industry, this grid defines her daily reality. She recalls that before the coup, independent outlets, like The Irrawaddy, DVB, and Mizzima, were expanding under partial civilian rule, covering politics and ethnic issues with relative freedom. After 2021, everything changed: licenses were revoked, journalists arrested, websites blocked, and offices forced to close. Many fled to Thailand or other border regions, but exile did not guarantee safety. They still relied on contacts inside Myanmar, who faced surveillance and violence. The result, she explains, is a fragmented media community struggling for survival while audiences lose access to reliable information.
Even online, journalists face extreme risk. Every action—sending a message, uploading footage, logging into social media—can expose them. “The military also targeted the journalists,” she says, “not only from offline, but also on the digital as well.” VPN use, once a simple workaround, is now criminalized. If caught using it, a journalist can be detained or interrogated. Encryption offers little protection when authorities demand passwords under threat. Torture and forced decryption are common, and possession of sensitive files can lead to long prison sentences.
Myat and her colleagues now train reporters in digital hygiene: encrypting communications, rotating passwords, limiting information sharing, and creating emergency protocols. She emphasizes that safety must become part of newsroom culture, not just technical training. “This digital safety should not only be at the technical level—it should be the daily newsroom culture.” Yet even these measures are sometimes no match for brute force. She recounts how one journalist, trying to cross a checkpoint, hid his USB drive in a snack box to evade inspection. Such small acts of ingenuity, she says, have become part of routine survival. Beyond censorship and arrests, another crisis looms: funding cuts from international donors have forced many outlets to close. For those that remain, digital security is inseparable from financial and physical security—the struggle to stay online is also a struggle to exist.
Finally, Candle joins the conversation, shifting the focus from journalism to research ethics. As a political researcher leading DigiSec’s “Duty of Care” project, she describes how scholars collecting data in or about Myanmar face the same surveillance risks as journalists. Their work—interviews, surveys, ethnographies—often involves sensitive subjects, and both researchers and participants can be targeted. Candle explains that after the coup, “it became more difficult and risky to conduct research and to collect data.” Every conversation, every recording, every file stored on a laptop could endanger someone. Her team therefore developed what they call a Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan (RAMP) for social research projects, adapting traditional ethics to the digital environment.
At the heart of this approach lies the principle of “do no harm.” Researchers must constantly question whether to record an interview, whether to store names, and where to keep data. In authoritarian settings, she argues, digital security is an ethical obligation, not a technical luxury. “We encourage researchers to think like security experts,” she says, “because all these potential risks are imposed after 2021.” This means integrating encryption, anonymization, and offline storage into every stage of research—from design to publication. Even after results are released, teams must review reports to remove identifying details that could expose participants or communities. Candle stresses that researchers themselves are also targets, so they have to think of themselves and their own safety first, because an arrested researcher endangers everyone they have spoken to.
She also highlights the chilling effect of repression. Many potential participants now refuse to speak, fearing surveillance or reprisals. Even with secure methods, she says, people ask who will publish the report and how their identities will be protected. As a result, the data reaching the outside world represent only a fraction of reality. The fear extends to young scholars, many of whom have abandoned research altogether. “Digital security,” she concludes, “is no longer just an add-on; it should be an integral part of research design and ethics.” Her call extends to donor organizations, which she urges to include security training and technology as essential components of all research funding in Myanmar.
Taken together, the four interviews form a composite picture of a country where information itself is endangered. Yet within their testimonies lies a shared insistence on resilience. Whether through improvised security protocols, clandestine journalism, or ethical innovation, Myanmar’s information defenders continue to find ways to speak. Their struggle is not only for access to the Internet but for the right to communicate truth without fear—a right that defines freedom itself.