Israeli drones, hacking software used in Myanmar coup
After nearly a decade of the existence of an often controversial democracy, Myanmar's forceful backslide into totalitarian military rule has so far continued to stand strong despite widespread pro-democracy protests and strikes across the country.
The New York Times on Sunday published a report which claims
that government budget records revealed that "Israeli-made surveillance
drones, European iPhone cracking devices and American software that can hack
into computers and vacuum up their contents," were used by the generals to
carry out their coup despite various sanctions and international arms embargoes
which prohibit such systems from being exported to the country.
“The military is now using those very tools to brutally
crack down on peaceful protesters risking their lives to resist the military
junta and restore democracy,” Ma Yadanar Maung, a spokeswoman for the Justice
For Myanmar group that monitors the Tatmadaw’s abuses, told the Times.
On the Israeli front, the Times article cited three Israeli defense manufacturers
which are been suspected of violating international arms embargoes: Elbit
Systems, Cellebrite and Gaia Automotive Industries.
The report found that Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit, which
claims to have had "no dealings with Myanmar since 2015 or 2016"
allegedly supplied spare parts to repair military grade Elbit drones in late
2019.
In 2018 however, Israel was supposed to have blocked all
military exports to the Southeast Asian nation, after reports emerged that
alleged Israeli weaponry was being sold to the Myanmar Army, which had been
accused of genocidal actions towards the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority.
According to the New York Times report, U Kyi Thar, chief
executive of Myanmar Future Science, a company which claims to be an
"educational and teaching aid supplier," confirmed that his company
began the repair work on the drones in late 2019 and continued into 2020.
“We ordered the spare parts from the Israeli company called
Elbit because they have good quality and Elbit is well-known,” he told the
Times.
The report added that Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the
Tatmadaw chief who led the military coup last month, visited Elbit’s offices
during a 2015 trip to Israel.
In addition to Elbit, the report claimed that the latest
government budget in Myanmar included "MacQuisition" forensic
software, which is designed to extract and collect data from Apple computers.
The US-based company that designed the software was bought
last year by Israeli cybersecurity company Cellebrite.
THIS IS not the first time Cellebrite has received criticism
for its involvement in the suppression of peaceful protests. Last summer,
international pressure led the company to stop selling its services to Hong
Kong and China.
Human rights activists have also criticized the company's
$30 million contract with the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency
(ICE), claiming the agency used Cellebrite technologies to spy on asylum
seekers and political activists.
A spokesperson for Cellebrite told the Times that it stopped
selling to Myanmar in 2018, and that BlackBag had stopped selling to the
country once it was acquired by Cellebrite.
In addition to the BlackBag allegations, one of Myanmar’s
top human-rights lawyers, U Khin Maung Zaw, who is currently representing
ousted civilian leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, told
the Times that Myanmar's police has presented evidence which was acquired using
Cellebrite technologies in trials which he worked on in 2019 and 2020.
Cellebrite came under fire in 2018, during a widely
criticized trial in which Khin Maung Zaw represented two Reuters journalists
who uncovered evidence of a Rohingya massacre the year before.
After it had come to light that Cellebrite forensic
technologies were used to gather data from the detained reporters' phones, the
company added the ability to remotely suspend licenses, in a way which erases
software from the machinery, rendering the device essentially useless.
“The cybersecurity department is still using that
technology,” Khin Maung Zaw told the Times. “To my knowledge, they use
Cellebrite to scan and recover data from cellphones.”
The report also alleged that both Cellebrite and BlackBag
denied any affiliation with a known "middleman" for international
arms deals named Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun.
The report said that the day after the Times reporter posed
"extensive questions" about the relationship between Cellebrite and
MySpace International - which was founded by Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htum - the entire
MySpace International website was taken down.
The third Israeli company mentioned in the article is Gaia
Automotive Industries, whose armored vehicles were confirmed by military
experts to have been used by the Myanmar military during the coup on February 1
in the capital Naypyidaw.
The vehicles did not go into mass production until after the
2018 arms embargo.
Gaia Automotive head Shlomi Shraga told the Times that he
had "not seen" any photos of Gaia's armored vehicles cruising through
Naypyidaw, stressing that Israel's Defense Ministry licenses all of his
exports.
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