Interesting article analyzing the regime's recent total cutoff of Burma from the Internet.

 

Selected snippets:

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Multiple sources identified the opportunity for improved surveillance as the rationale behind the government’s policy originally limiting Internet access to the curfew hours of 21:00 and 5:00. Not only would the late hours allotted for access significantly reduce the number of users (as most Burmese users do not have home access), but it would also make the task of identifying targeted users easier for a government without much experience in tracking and investigating Internet usage. Government email services are also believed to be under surveillance, with delays of up to 24 hours between the sending and receipt of emails.

Surveillance methods are more effective when there are fewer targets, and a possible strategy of the Burmese regime may be to keep more people offline. The government appears to be pursuing a combination of methods, including the limiting of access, increased filtering, and intimidation and harassment.
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In the current climate of extreme repression, fear, and deep disillusionment, as roundups and abuses continue, bi-directional technologies are put to many uses. Reports are emerging about information technology being used effectively to assist authorities in identifying and targeting citizens. According to the Sunday Times, security forces in Mandalay used Chinese counter-terrorist technology to check the registrations of motorcycles against numbers captured from digital images in the protests.  While citizens were capturing protests on video, so were security forces. 

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While the SPDC has exacerbated its legacy of massive human rights violations through this crackdown, many believe that the breakthrough uses of the Internet over this period have enabled some irreversible gains. Multiple generations of Burmese living locally and abroad have found linkages to each other as blogging became increasingly recognized as a valuable source of information. One Burmese leader characterizes this gain as the forging of a link between the leaders of the generation that participated in 8.8.88, many of whom were jailed or exiled, and the new generation of activists in Burma.

Burmese netizens, operating in a constrained and challenging space in a country with especially low Internet penetration rates, have demonstrated that the tools of information technology can have a strong impact on the global coverage of events as they are unfolding, and sometimes on the events themselves. The events in Burma also provide a chilling example of the limitations of the Internet, access to which was ultimately vulnerable to the unilateral choices of a repressive regime. However, even the vast majority of Burmese without access to or knowledge of the Internet may have benefited from the enduring achievement of a small band of citizen bloggers and journalists the uploading of vital, relevant information to the Internet was broadcast back in via television and radio and spread through personal networks and communities throughout the country.