Thailand - The Internet And Censorship

[neil053]

1,893 sites now blocked

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

A total of 1,893 web sites are now officially blocked here, according to the government's first official response under the Official Information Act. However, this is a tiny fraction of the 17,883 sites on the latest leaked "blocklist" from the ICT Ministry, while even the National Police Commission's web site once claimed 32,500 sites were blocked.

Freedom Against Censorship - Thailand (Fact) coordinator C.J. Hinke, a lecturer at Thammasat University, said that of 20 questions put to the Official Information Commission, only two had been answered and the rest had been dismissed on national security grounds.

"The essence of the 20 questions was, show us the blocklist, show us the reasons and show us the law," he said.

Fact had submitted its query under the Official Information Act in March last year.

Under the law, officials have to respond within 30 days, or 60 days in unusual circumstances. In this case, they took a year to respond.

Hinke claimed that Internet censorship is illegal and violates 11 articles of the 1997 constitution and at least two in the 2007 constitution. The only legal way to block a site is to get a court order.

Anonymous proxies made up the bulk of the MICT blocklist. Under the cybercrime law, concealing an IP addresses is illegal which implies the end of anonymity and privacy.

"Do we really want to create a surveillance society where every opinion and expression is tracked and monitored and we are perhaps jailed for expressing our thoughts?" he asked.

"The Council of State has declared that Internet censorship is illegal, as has the administrative court," he said.



Footnote.


As of last week all videos from youtube are now blocked. If a user in Thailand tries to watch a video a message appears saying ''video no longer available''.
we can still access youtube but cannot watch any videos.

Also under the new cybercrime law all ISP, schools and universities, workplaces and internet cafes have to keep detailed logs of users activities for inspection for 90 days.

Most of the biggest porn sites are now blocked.

Many torrent sites getting blocked as well.

The use of proxy's is now a criminal offense. If you are found using proxies you can face up to 3 years in jail and/or 500,000 baht fine.

The possession of pornographic images is now illegal. This includes webmasters who let people post porn images on their servers.

The Thai government are having total control and censorship over the internet. It is getting as bad as China.

[zingwraith]

lol im so fucken happy im a chinese living in australia xD if i lived in china, i wouldnt know what i'd do to pass my time...most of my time now is used to download cracked stuff or go on youtube haha

[aabee]

just move away .Thailand is not plalce to live.

[Angel99]

Hi Neil,
Hang in there, as we all know these knee jerk actions by Governments don't last forever.
I"m sure someone will come up with a backdoor.

[neil053]

Originally Posted by aabee

just move away .Thailand is not plalce to live.

Thailand is a real good place to live. That's why i am here. As with all countries there is the good with the bad. If I lived back in the UK I would have the sky high prices to worry about. So I am staying.