A Swedish non-profit filed a class action lawsuit against Telenor on Tuesday on behalf of over 1,200 people whose phone data it says the Norwegian telecommunications' Myanmar subsidiary shared with the country's military junta following a 2021 coup.
Telenor, which has since exited Myanmar, said it believed there was nothing in the lawsuit that the company had not already addressed and "in our view it is unlikely that such a claim will succeed".
The lawsuit, filed in Norway by the Justice and Accountability Initiative, alleges Telenor Myanmar shared the call logs and location data of suspected political opponents of the junta, exposing them to repression and leading to the execution of at least one prominent activist and the prosecution of another.
The lawsuit claims Telenor is liable for €9,000 (US$10,524) per customer whose data was shared.
"If successful, this case would be the first ever to hold a telecoms company to account for not sufficiently protecting user data from access by an authoritarian regime," said Beini Ye, legal counsel at the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is supporting the case.
'Terrible’ if data was misused by junta, Telenor claims
Telenor, which is 54% owned by the Norwegian state, was informed of plans to file the suit in a pre-action letter in October and said at the time it had been "legally required to provide traffic data to the authorities".
"Telenor Myanmar was operating on the ground in a war zone," the company said in an email to Reuters on Wednesday, adding that refusing the military authorities' requests could have led to "imprisonment, torture or the death penalty" for local employees.
"Telenor Myanmar had no real options. We could not play Russian roulette with the lives of our employees," it said. "It is terrible if data from Telenor has been misused by the authorities."
However, it said Myanmar's military authorities had sole responsibility for how they treat their citizens and "neither Telenor nor any other civilian organisation has that responsibility."
A spokesman for Myanmar's military government did not respond to requests for comment.
Victims of repression hope lawsuit will bring justice
Telenor sold its business in Myanmar following the coup, which unseated an elected government, to avoid European Union sanctions amid pressure from the junta to activate intercept surveillance technology and exited the country in March 2022.
Before leaving, however, Telenor Myanmar shared data from least 1,253 phone numbers with the military, the lawsuit alleges, with Telenor's Norwegian headquarters recommending its team in the country comply with junta requests.
Aung Thu, a civil society activist arrested in September 2021, told Reuters his information was among data that was allegedly shared.
Originally charged with incitement after leading anti-coup protests, he had been due to be released under an amnesty but was instead re-arrested at the prison gate and given an additional five-year sentence.
He said data handed over to the junta by Telenor formed the basis for his re-arrest and came up during his interrogation and trial.
"I am hoping for justice, not just for myself, but for all the people of Myanmar," he told Reuters, in reference to the lawsuit.
Phoe Zeya Thaw - a popular hip hop artist, who was a lawmaker under the ousted civilian government - was hanged in 2022 along with three other activists accused of helping carry out "terror acts" in a case that prompted international outcry.
Telenor had shared his phone data a few weeks earlier, the lawsuit alleges.
"It is not just a wife losing her husband," his wife Tha Zin said in a statement. "It is also a loss to democracy."
The lawsuit seeks additional damages for financial losses for Aung Thu and Zeya Thaw.
- In Thailand: Analyst queries Telenor's True sale for $3.9 billion
