By CJ Hinke

Conservative, Royalist Manager media network published the first government announcement of further Internet censorship since July.

Buried in Manager’s propaganda, we learn that the new Army commander has signed a memorandum of understanding with the ICT minister and the ministers of justice and culture. The MOU specifies 43,000 new websites to be blocked immediately and 3,000 pending for lèse majesté content.

Thai governments official media releases since the Emergency Decree April 7 already totalled 210,110 blocked websites.

Websites blocked prior to Emergency Decree April 7: 65,000

Thai government has no plan to lift the state of emergency but they seem to be blocking as fast as they can in case the situation reverts to ‘normal’ and they must once again seek court orders for blocking under the Computer Crimes Act 2007.

Relying solely upon govt media releases to date, Thailand is now blocking 277,610 websites.

“

(Via Global Voices Advocacy.)

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009
Web Censoring Widens Across Southeast Asia
Governments Lacking Technical Means Use Coercion and Intimidation in Efforts to Suppress Criticism Online

By JAMES HOOKWAY

BANGKOK — Attempts to censor the Internet are spreading to Southeast Asia as governments turn to coercion and intimidation to rein in online criticism.

Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam lack the kind of technology and financial resources that China and some other large countries use to police the Internet. The Southeast Asian nations are using other methods — also seen in China — to tamp down criticism, including arresting some bloggers and individuals posting contentious views online.

That is distressing free-speech advocates who had hoped that Southeast Asia — until recently a region where Internet use was relatively unfettered — would become a model of open debate in the developing world as its economies modernize.

Malaysia has recently used its colonial-era Internal Security Act, which allows detention for up to two years without trial, to muzzle bloggers. Thailand is ramping up its reliance on a recently introduced Computer Crimes Act to restrict criticism of its royal family and limit the spread of what the government calls seditious material. Vietnam, an authoritarian Communist state, has been arresting people caught posting thoughts that run contrary to government policy, and has detained lawyers who try to defend them.

“A number of governments in the region have discovered they can’t use technology alone to block out dissent because people will always find a way around it,” says Roby Alampay, executive director of a Bangkok-based media advocacy group, the Southeast Asia Press Alliance. “Instead they are trying to send out the message that the government is watching what their citizens are up to, and many of these arrests are deliberately high-profile.”

To be sure, not every government in the region is trying to bolt down the Internet. Singapore, where mainstream media are largely controlled by the government, has taken a relatively hands-off approach to the Internet. The governments of Indonesia and the Philippines don’t limit political content on the Internet in their countries.

The case of Raja Petra Kamarudin, Malaysia’s best-known blogger, reveals a different approach. The 58-year-old prince, or raja, in one of Malaysia’s royal families started his feisty Malaysia Today news Web site a decade ago after the arrest of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on sodomy charges, which Mr. Anwar denied. Mr. Anwar was convicted, jailed until the conviction was overturned, and is now being prosecuted again on sodomy charges, which he again is denying.

Since launching his Web site, Raja Petra has been a thorn in the side of Malaysia’s ruling National Front coalition, posting a series of articles notable for their criticism of the government. His postings led to his detention for nearly two months under the Internal Security Act in 2008.

Malaysian authorities have accused Raja Petra of suggesting in a letter to prosecutors investigating the murder of a Mongolian model in 2006 that Prime Minister Najib Razak was involved in the killing, which Mr. Najib denies. Raja Petra was charged with sedition and went into hiding. He says the charge is misdirected because he didn’t publish the letter, though he admits writing it and stands by its contents.

Malaysian government spokesman Tengku Sharifuddin Tengku Ahmad declined to comment about Raja Petra’s allegations, and he didn’t respond to questions about the broader issues surrounding Malaysia’s approach to censorship.

Malaysia’s government is careful not to be seen to be directly censoring the Internet because of a longstanding pledge not to interfere online and potentially scare off foreign technology companies, such as Microsoft Corp., which operate there.

In August, Mr. Najib’s government backed off from implementing Web filters similar to those used in China to weed out certain political topics and other contentious discussions. It has also considered requiring that bloggers register with the government, but decided not to implement the rule.

Instead, says Raja Petra, Malaysia’s authorities are using criminal laws “to make an example of me so that others will run away from the truth,” although he says their efforts will backfire. “Other bloggers are becoming more vocal and more aggressive.”

Some media analysts suggest governments are catching up with the impact of the Internet and mobile-phone messaging and how they helped to trigger social upheavals in countries such as Ukraine and the Philippines. Iran’s success in putting down Twitter and Facebook-driven protests this summer may have lent some indirect encouragement, too.

“Even if governments aren’t censoring outright, they are providing an adequate disincentive to posting criticism. People now know there will be consequences,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, a professor of journalism and media studies at Hong Kong University and a co-founder of GlobalVoices, an international citizens’ media Web site.

In Thailand, police last month arrested two people for forwarding an audio recording of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva purportedly ordering soldiers to attack antigovernment demonstrators. Mr. Abhisit said the recording is fake. Another Thai, Suwicha Thakor, was sentenced to 10 years in jail in June after pleading guilty to posting videos mocking Thailand’s revered monarchy.

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn says the country’s computer-crime laws are designed to protect people from fraud and defamation, and says the laws are at times being used to address what he describes as “national security” issues.

In recent weeks in Vietnam, meanwhile, popular blogger Bui Thanh Hieu was detained for several days after criticizing the government’s mining policies; another blogger, Huy Duc, was fired from his job at a Ho Chi Minh City newspaper after the Communist Party complained about his posts, while others have also been briefly detained. A Vietnamese foreign-ministry spokeswoman on Thursday said the bloggers had been detained to enable police to investigate alleged violations of national security.

Internet-freedom advocates worry that more governments beyond Southeast Asia will follow the region’s lead and try to take additional steps to tighten Internet controls.

“Being blocked from visiting a Web site is frustrating,” Mr. Alampay, the Bangkok-based activist, says. “But when you see or hear about people being arrested, then that could stop you from logging on at all.”

by Tim Conneally, February 5, 2009, 2:52 PM

Thailand map (square)In light of the Thai government’s strict censorship rules, anti-censorship group Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) released information yesterday that it describes as ‘easy, legal tools for circumventing Internet censorship.’

The government of Thailand has repeatedly come to blows with Web sites both domestic and foreign over free speech issues. YouTube, for example, was banned for four months in 2007 for hosting content deemed offensive to Thais, and a reported 4,800 sites were blocked by the Information and Communication Technology Ministry (ICT) in March 2008.

Since the institution of the Computer Crime Act of 2007, censorship has become an issue of paramount importance to Thailand.

From the unofficial translation of the law:

Section 14. If any person commits any offence of the following acts shall be subject to imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than one hundred thousand baht or both: (1) that involves import to a computer system of forged computer data, either in whole or in part, or false computer data, in a manner that is likely to cause damage to that third party or the public; (2) that involves import to a computer system of false computer data in a manner that is likely to damage the country’s security or cause a public panic; (3) that involves import to a computer system of any computer data related with an offence against the Kingdom’s security under the Criminal Code;

While no official blacklist has been published by the government, FACT proclaimed yesterday that the number of sites blocked by the ICT and Royal Thai Police now exceeds 50,000.

Since the Royal Thai Army’s coup d’etat in 2006, there has been ongoing political turmoil in the country, which has lately manifested itself in the conflict between the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and the People’s Power Party (PPP). Thai message boards have gone ablaze with political discourse, but police censorship continues to threaten seditious sites.

The Bangkok Post spoke to ICT Minister Ranongruk Suwunchwee last week who said she has single-handedly ordered sites to be blocked without court authority to bypass the red tape of doing it legally.

Thailand’s constitutional courts certainly have had a lot on their hands, with the Prime Minister and his six-party coalition representing the PPP on trial for election fraud. The court on Tuesday dissolved the PPP, the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party, forcing the Prime Minister — who ceded power in early December — along dozens of party execs into a five-year political exile.

Meanwhile, FACT yesterday issued its ‘easy, legal tools for circumventing Internet censorship,’ to protect the rights of Internet users in this tumultuous period. The group’s solutions involve using VPNs to create a secure exchange of data.

‘Your own private network is located overseas beyond the reach of Thai censors using an encrypted tunnel so that governments and ISPs won’t even be able to see where you’re surfing,’ said the group’s statement yesterday, ‘Unlike anonymous Internet proxies, criminal under the cybercrime law, using VPN makes streaming video and audio freely available.’

Analysis
1,203 new websites censored by Thailand

Summary

Wikileaks has released the secret internet censorship lists of Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). The list was obtained by advisory board member CJ Hinke, director of Freedom Against Censorship Thailand.

The 1,203 newly blocked websites are located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam.

Every blocked site has the internally noted reason of “lese majeste” — criticizing the King — however, it is obvious that many sites were blocked for quite different reasons. It would appear, in fact, that the judiciary did not examine most sites before issuing orders but instead rubber-stamped government requests.

A total of 860 YouTube videos have been blocked, far in excess of the blocking conducted by The Official Censor of the Military Coup; a further 200 pages mirroring those videos are also blocked. Curiously, Hillary Clinton’s campaign videos, and 24 Charlie Chaplin videos are also on the censorship lists.

Although we have not yet found the opportunity to examine each website censored, an eclectic mix of censorship has been revealed resulting in overblocking of many benign webpages.

Along with the obligatory YouTube videos and their mirror sites alleged to be lese majeste in Thailand, numerous blocks to Thai webboard pages, particularly at popular discussion sites including Prachatai (45 separate pages) and Same Sky (56 separate pages). Of course, all webboards in Thailand, including those just mentioned, moderate discussions and self-censor to avoid closure. It is interesting that Thai bureaucrats still find reasons to censor.

Also blocked are weblogs referencing Paul Handley’s unauthorised Biography of Thailand’s King Bhumibhol, The King Never Smiles, and its translation into Thai along with Thai Wikipedia entries.

The webpages of respected Thai Buddhist social critic, Sulak Sivaraksa who is currently on bail for his fourth accusation of lese majeste, and Matthew Hunt, respected Thai journalist, anticensorship activist and FACT signer, are also blocked as are pages of the respected international newsmagazine, The Economist.

Typically, web censorship in Thailand is conducted in secret. We think there is a right to know inherent in a free society. We call for transparency and accountability in government and freedom of expression, freedom of communication and freedom of association as fundamental human rights.

On December 21, a new ICT minister was appointed to Cabinet, Ranongruk Suwanchawee. She must be held accountable for censorship. [edit]

See Internet Censorship in Thailand for information about previous censorship lists released by Wikileaks.

December 21, 2008

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE (Wikileaks)

Thailand official MICT censorship list, 20 Dec 2008

Wikileaks has released the secret internet censorship lists of Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). The list was obtained by advisory board member CJ Hinke, director of Freedom Against Censorship Thailand.

The 1,203 newly blocked websites are located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam.

Every blocked site has the internally noted reason of “lese majeste” — criticizing the King — however, it is obvious that many sites were blocked for quite different reasons. It would appear, in fact, that the judiciary did not examine most sites before issuing orders but instead rubber-stamped government requests.

A total of 860 YouTube videos have been blocked, far in excess of the blocking conducted by The Official Censor of the Military Coup; a further 200 pages mirroring those videos are also blocked. Curiously, Hillary Clinton’s campaign videos, and 24 Charlie Chaplin videos are also on the censorship lists.

Although we have not yet found the opportunity to examine each website censored, an eclectic mix of censorship has been revealed resulting in overblocking of many benign webpages.

Along with the obligatory YouTube videos and their mirror sites alleged to be lese majeste in Thailand, numerous blocks to Thai webboard pages, particularly at popular discussion sites including Prachatai (45 separate pages) and Same Sky (56 separate pages). Of course, all webboards in Thailand, including those just mentioned, moderate discussions and self-censor to avoid closure. It is interesting that Thai bureaucrats still find reasons to censor.

Also blocked are weblogs referencing Paul Handley’s unauthorised Biography of Thailand’s King Bhumibhol, The King Never Smiles, and its translation into Thai along with Thai Wikipedia entries.

The webpages of respected Thai Buddhist social critic, Sulak Sivaraksa who is currently on bail for his fourth accusation of lese majeste, and Matthew Hunt, respected Thai journalist, anticensorship activist and FACT signer, are also blocked as are pages of the respected international newsmagazine, The Economist.

Typically, web censorship in Thailand is conducted in secret. We think there is a right to know inherent in a free society. We call for transparency and accountability in government and freedom of expression, freedom of communication and freedom of association as fundamental human rights.

On December 21, a new ICT minister was appointed to Cabinet, Ranongruk Suwanchawee. She must be held accountable for censorship.

IBLS Editorial Department- Staff Attorney
Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Thailand has a long history of government- authorized censorship. The 2007 Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand and the 1997 Constitution guarantee freedom of speech with the proviso that censorship may be imposed in certain circumstances. Additionally, Thailand’s Computer-Related Crimes Act, which was introduced by the military junta, imposes some limitations by penalizing a range of computer-related speeches.

The 2007 Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand guarantees freedom of speech but a law may impose censorship ‘for the purpose of maintaining the security of the State, protecting the rights, liberties, dignity, reputation, family or privacy rights of other persons, maintaining public order or good morals or preventing or halting the deterioration of the mind or health of the public.’

One of the first orders passed by the military junta that took power in Thailand on September 19, 2006, was to appoint an Official Censor of the Military Coup. The military junta took its cue from the overthrown elected government, which had publicly stated that it intended to block 800,000 Websites from Internet users in Thailand. Between the ascension of the military junta and Thailand’s general election in December 2007, the Official Censor blocked 17,793. In addition, the Royal Thai Police claimed having blocked a further 32,500 Websites.

(Via BBC News.)

You’d think they have bigger problems

Thai authorities have reportedly moved to shut down hundreds of websites they view as a threat to national security, amid ongoing civil unrest in Bangkok.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 3 September 2008. 23:42:00

Thai the interweb down, sport

SHOWING THE WORLD what it really thinks about all this democracy rubbish, the Thai government has decided to close down and block over 1600 websites, purportedly in the name of national security. Mun Patanotai, Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology Minister, yesterday petitioned his country’s courts to close down some 400…

(Via The Inquirer.)