This week has seen a number of high profile media stories relating to web censorship in Thailand. The Bangkok Post, in particular, has published a flurry of articles this week.

Most recently ‘Activists call for review of Computer Crime Act’ covers the main talking points from a seminar this week which marked the third anniversary of the Computer Crimes Act.

Key points include extensive comment from Supinya Klangnarong:

The Computer Crime Act is used mostly against red shirt supporters or their sympathisers, which is unfair, media reform activist Supinya Klangnarong said.

Thailand’s record on internet censorship is worse than China’s, she said. The communist country may be much stricter when it comes to censorship but, unlike Thailand, it applies the same standard to all.

The government should review the way it applies the law or its political critics will feel bitter, and national reconciliation will be that much harder to attain, she said.

Thousands of websites and webboards with pro-United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship leanings have been closed down. Censorship reached a peak during the red shirt rallies from March to May.

But the same level of censorship is rarely applied to websites supporting the UDD’s rival, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, she said.

The real irony of this one-sided censorship is that the internet is the playground of the PAD. Thailand’s digital divide is such that traditional UDD supporters are less likely to have access to the web, whereas more traditional media like TV, radio and print are more effective methods of reach mass, grassroots UDD supporters.

Comment from Suranand Vejjajiva, political commentator and cousin of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit, is also included in the article.

Suranand Vejjajiva, a minister in the Thaksin Shinawatra government, said the act’s definition of national security is too broad, which reflects the nature of the state’s need to exercise power.

The state seeks control rather than merely maintaining security, he said.

This point of controlling the web is an astute observation that sums up the attitude of distrust many senior bureaucrats, politicians and influencers have for the internet.

While other governments are investigating money, personnel and time into investigating its potential for engaging and communicating with the public, Thailand is fortifying its web censorship laws with a cyber security team dedicated to tracking comments online.

The difference in attitude is huge.

On that note, ‘Tracking digital footprints’ appeared this week under Bangkok Post’s tech section, adopts the opposite approach and looks at how officials are policing the internet.

Aside from overstating the issue by using language which suggests there are many internet users breaking the lese majeste law and getting away with it, the article is an interesting read.

The sub-head claiming “[Thai] Police are becoming increasingly adept at tackling online crimes” seems somewhat misleading as these excerpts show.

In cyberspace, digital footprints can be used as evidence of crimes. Police are growing increasingly adept at identifying and proving online crimes.

Speaking at the Guidelines to Handle ICT threats seminar hosted by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Pol Lt Col Supat Thamthanarag, Special Case Inquiry, Official Senior Professional Level at the Department of Special Investigations, said that investigation was especially challenging as the sites are often hosted overseas but that digital forensics can still be used to identify the perpetrator.

Digital forensics sounds both interesting and very technical, lets hope it isn’t as simple as just looking at a web page.

The key challenge is to prove identity. Suspects commit crimes without witnesses on social networks. The officer needs to find out basic information about the user’s profile such as contact email, friends and telephone numbers that can be used to identify the suspect.

The manual search option is clearly not remotely sophisticated as many users can hide their details, or simply chose not to publish them in the first place.

The next step doesn’t look any more promising.

“The important thing is for witnesses to help by collecting evidence such as screenshots and related content to help officers identify and catch the suspect,” Pol Lt Col Supat said.

Assuming the focus is still on social networks and lese majeste, given the article raises the example of Wipas Raksakulthai who was arrested for content on Facebook, the “witnesses” sought are those that are friends with the offenders.

So, beyond relying on users listing their contact details or being turned-in by their friends, how does the monitoring process work?

To investigate and identify suspects, officials need to process the chain of events by sifting through log files of Internet traffic, identity logs and event logs.

Somchai Chantharamatsakan, a public prosecutor at the Office of the Attorney General, said it is important to preserve digital evidence and prevent it being tampered with, just like with normal forensics, for it to be accepted as evidence in court.

The important thing is that whoever gathers evidence needs to be trained so that timestamps and other important data cannot be changed, or else the evidence will be rejected by the courts. Normally, an MICT-certified “Guideline First Incident Responder” needs to be called in to preserve the evidence.

Somchai even goes so far as to suggest additional framework be introduced to aid the process, though it isn’t clear how it would do so.

Somchai added that in order to fight cybersecurity threats, Thailand should implement a Cyberspace Security Strategy like in the US which has its National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace consistent with the National Strategy for Homeland Security.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, has a related post, again in Bangkok Post, addressing said difficulties of policing the internet.

Pavin again raises the issue of control.

Domestic and international rights groups have voiced their concern about the lese majeste law being used as a political weapon to silence the opposition.

Some believe that wielding this law does not really show an “authority” on the part of the government. Indeed, it shows a high degree of “desperation” to control information, especially the information available online.

Blocking controversial websites will prove to be futile since cyberspace is borderless. How many websites does the government think it needs to shut down in order to save Thailand from the “bad elements”?

Pavin argues the Thai government must begin to accept social media as a valid and powerful form of communications, just as businesses are doing.

In a recent article published in The New York Times, an American diplomat who is tasked with spearheading a public diplomacy programme, admitted his country would gain nothing from shunning the social media everyone else uses.

He said, “The 21st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak.”

The Thai government may block a million websites but the people will still find other ways to spread their messages. Anyone could construct a website anytime at little cost or sign up for a free communication tool with Twitter. These provide a great platform for disseminating opinions, speedily and efficiently. With increasing internet penetration, it will be increasingly difficult for the government to monitor every single website.

The loss of control the government has feared is already a thing of the past. The reality of today is the government will not be able to control even information regarded as dangerous to the core existence of the nation.

While in closing he says:

Instead of trying to go after and curb activities of people with ill intent – a truly mission impossible in this day and age, an easier solution would be for the government to reform all security-related laws, including the lese majeste code so that they would not be easily used and abused to serve certain interests of certain power holders. However, this solution has never been a part of the government’s policy.

Malicious websites will never go away. The more the government tries to wipe them out, the more they will return and in other guises; it would be just like throwing fuel onto the fire.

The ugly reality is that in doing so, the government itself will be perceived as an authoritarian body striving to shut down freedom of expression.

This is exactly how the Thai government is perceived thanks to arrests over Facebook comments, the blocking of YouTube before it and the censorship of more than 100,000 websites.

Pavin has another op-ed on a similar subject, ‘Thailand’s Massive Internet Censorship’, for Asia Sentinel in which he reveals the cyber security force operates a blacklist.

The information ministry announced a blacklist of 200 persons banned from posting to the Internet. This restriction was undefined but presumably all sites bearing these names will be blocked.

This list includes former Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office and Thaksin’s confidante Jakrapob Penkair, and Chulalongkorn University Professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn.

Early this month (July), the Department of Special Investigation, which handles cases involving plots to overthrow the monarchy, also set up nine teams to improve efficiency in dealing with the anti-monarchy network.

Knowledge of this list is not new but that it may number 200 gives an interesting insight into the sheer extend of the monitoring process, and suspects followed.

Pavin concludes, much like his other article, with thoughts on what web censorship is really doing to the government.

So far, the blocking of websites has further deepened the politicization of the monarchy and served to damage, not safeguard, the institution.

Social critic and lèse-majesté case defendant Sulak Sivaraksa said: “The problem of abusing the lèse-majesté law is now utterly messy. The fact that leading world intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and others have petitioned to Abhisit to reform the law is a testimony to it.”

Blocking websites will prove to be futile since the world of Internet is borderless. How many websites have to be closed down in order to protect national security?

In reality, the government’s latest move is likely to hinder its own effort to achieve reconciliation. The government may argue that some websites with malicious intent must be banned. But exploiting lèse-majesté law to undermine political opponents will further deepen social injustice and aggravate hatred that has prevailed in the Thai society.

And finally, a few thoughts from my own humble self originally posted here as an addition to Global Voice’s excellent summary of sex and web censorship across Southeast Asia.

Many of Thailand’s 100,000 blocked sites featured comment critical of the government content but were not written by red-shirt supporters. 

While the government may argue that red-shirt sites are a threat to the country, anti-democratic, chaotic and a whole host of other anarchic descriptions, the blocking of non-red blogs which dared to question, or hold the government to account, gives cause for concern.

Added to that concern is the recent witchhunt of Mark Thawkumlue, a contestant in Academy Fantasia, who dared to express a personal opinion criticising the government and Prime Minister on Facebook. Though Thawkumlue used crude language, his persecuted – which saw him step down from the reality TV show – illustrates the current limate in Thailand, which some liking to McCarthyism.

Online has traditionally be a bastion of free speech particularly within oppressive/censored regimes, but recent developments, including the continued extension of ‘temporarily’ website blockages and Thailand’s CRES, beg the question long will it be until Thai residents enjoy freer speech offline than online?