Gateways of Perception in Thailand

Thailand’s ruling junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NPCO), is waging war against the Internet. It is a campaign of cyber-control launched largely to detect and eliminate anti-monarchy sentiment ahead of a delicate royal succession, but one that coincidentally threatens to alienate the urban middle class that backed last year’s military takeover and suspension of democracy in the name of reform and stability.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ordered the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) at a Cabinet meeting in September to study and expedite the creation of a single gateway for Internet traffic entering and leaving the kingdom. In a written order, Prayuth said the proposed gateway should serve as “a tool to control access to inappropriate sites and the influx of information from abroad.” Local media uncovered the secretive command around a month after it was handed down.

Revelation of the scheme sparked a public outcry, voiced in media commentaries and social media campaigns against the junta’s presumed prioritization of surveillance over freedom on the Internet. An online petition to stop the gateway plan on Change.org garnered over 150,000 signatures by mid-October. Pseudonymous cyber-activists attacked and disabled government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ homepage, and threatened attacks on other state sites unless the Cabinet formally revoked Prayuth’s order.

In a rare climb down, junta officials played down the gateway’s significance. ICT Minister Uttama Savanayana said the single gateway aimed mainly to lower costs for online businesses as part of the government’s wider technology-promoting “digital economy” initiative and was not geared towards censorship and surveillance. Prayuth said the gateway aimed to enhance cyber-security against rising online scams, hacking, malware, and system attacks, and would not be implemented if found to be illegal or in breach of human rights.

Activists are rightly skeptical. The NCPO first announced its intention to create a single Internet gateway, to be jointly managed by the army, police, National Intelligence Agency and National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, days after staging the May 22, 2014 coup and imposing martial law. That military command overtly aimed to administer the Internet, govern websites and purge provocative content, while consolidating multiple private and state-run gateways into one centrally-controlled choke point.

While consolidating the coup, Prayuth’s junta ordered Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to temporarily block access to Facebook and to censor websites within an hour of receiving an official request. MICT representatives were later dispatched to Japan and Singapore to seek cooperation from Google, Facebook and online messaging service LINE in filtering content deemed as objectionable by Thai authorities. None of the technology companies is known to have complied with these requests. A cyber-security bill tabled in January, if passed, would allow a government committee to access information on personal computers, cell phones and other electronic devices without a court order for reasons of national security.

All of these measures aim mainly to suppress the circulation of anti-monarchy materials online. Thailand maintains the world’s strictest lèse majesté law, known as Article 112, to shield the monarchy from criticism. Criminal charges for online activity under the law have surged under the NCPO. The clampdown comes amid palace announcements of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s fading health and signs that heir apparent Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn’s claim to the throne may be contested by a rival royalist faction that favors his sister Princess Sirindhorn.

For instance, Thai tour guide Pongsak Sriboonpeng was sentenced by a military court to 60 years in prison, the harshest ever penalty administered under the law, for six posts he made to his Facebook page. Last November, website editor Nut Rungwon was sentenced by a military court to nine years behind bars, later halved to four and a half years, for reposting an article critical of Bhumibol written by an exiled Thai academic. Another lèse majesté suspect, known only as Sripop, faces possible jail time for posting alleged anti-monarchy poems on his blog. ILaw, a Bangkok-based free expression advocacy group, estimates authorities have blocked an estimated 100,000 URLs for lèse majesté content. 

Newly appointed security chiefs aim to intensify the royalist repression. On October 19, military and police commanders announced the creation of a new Army Cyber Center to be tasked with monitoring and sorting anti-monarchy content posted on-line and to social media. The police’s Technology Crime Suppression Division, meanwhile, announced plans for a public awareness campaign to be launched in late October entitled “Think before posting…clicking might lead to jail” which warns of the dangers of clicking, posting, or sharing anti-monarchy materials.     

With such strong censorship intent, analysts wonder why the NCPO has failed to implement the single gateway nearly a year and a half after its initial proposal. Unlike China’s “Great Firewall,” which allows for centralized filtering of all Internet traffic, Thailand’s cyber-controls have so far relied mostly on monitoring publicly accessible websites, blogs, and social media judging by evidence submitted by state prosecutors in cases filed against alleged online offenders.

While Thai authorities are widely believed to be incapable of tracking communications over the so-called Dark Web – networks overlaid on the Internet that require special authorization, software or configurations to access – a number of lèse majesté suspects have recently inexplicably been nabbed for their online activities while using virtual private networks (VPNs) and Tor anonymity software, according to iLaw. Because they will face closed trials in military courts, the evidence and how it was gathered by monitoring officials will not be publicly disclosed, iLaw said. That’s stoked fear and loathing among private, politically oriented online communities.   

Some Bangkok-based technology experts argue it would be legally and technically impossible for authorities to roll back liberalization that has granted licenses to private companies to operate independent Internet gateways. Others argue Prayuth could roll back privatization via Article 44 of the interim constitution, a measure that gives him sweeping powers to implement reforms. That could be in line with his nationalistic pracharat, or “people’s state,” economic policy by restoring the state-owned Communications Authority of Thailand’s previous monopoly over international communications.

While Thais are reluctant to openly criticize the NCPO’s rising use of anti-crown charges ahead of a sensitive, once-in-a-generation royal succession, the middle class has spoken out strongly against its perceived plan to impose greater surveillance of the Internet. Some analysts wonder if cyber-criticism against the single gateway plan could morph into a wider popular movement against heavy-handed military rule, particularly if authorities identify and prosecute those who organized and participated in the cyber-attacks that crashed government websites. It’s the type of online activity the junta clearly fears and aims to preempt through tighter control of the Internet.