Thailands junta extends censorship with mass online surveillance

Pic: AP.

Thailands ruling military junta isfurther tightening itsgripon the public discourse by heightening its censorship measures, going as far as reportedly implementing widespreadsurveillance of Thai Internetusers. The new measure seeks to crush criticism at the military government and tocrack down on anything that is deemed insulting to the royal institution also known as lse majest.

When the Thai military declared martial law two days before it launched the coupof May 22, 2014, one of the main targetswas the complete control of the broadcast media, which resulted in the presence of soldiers at all major television channels and the shutdown of thousands of unlicensed community radio stations and over a dozen politically partisan satellite TV channels,primarily those belonging to the warring street protest groups.

Nearly five months later, most of these satellite TV channels (with one notable exception) are back on the air but have been renamed and had to considerably toned down their political leanings before they were allowed to broadcast again.TheTV hosts who were last years heavy-hitting political TV commentators are now hosting entertainment programs or, if theyre lucky, return to a talk show format, but only in the name of national reform and reconciliation.

But the military junta, also formally known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO),still has afirm grip on the media, as it has set upspecific monitor watchdogs for different media platforms (and also specifically for foreign news outlets) to screen out critical content against the NCPO. Furthermore, ithas practically issued a gag order to the Thai media only then to reiterate that while criticism against the military junta is allowed, it shouldonly be done in good faith.

The censorship measures and the monitoring efforts also extend online. Unlike during the last military coup in 2006, the emergence of social media networks makes it a daunting uphill battle for the juntato control the narrative. Nevertheless, the authorities have always been eager to have more control to filter and censor online content and have blatantlyresorted to phishing for user information, andeven considered launching its ownnational social network.And there was this:

In late May,a brief block of the social network Facebooksparked uproar online, while statements by the Ministry for Information andTelecommunicationTechnology (MICT) and the NCPO over whether or not the Facebook-block was ordered or it was an technical glitchcontradicted each other. It emerged later through a the foreign parent company of a Thai telco companythatthere actually was an orderto block Facebook, for which itgot scolded by the Thai authorities.

Thailands junta sets up media watchdogs to monitor anti-coup dissent, Siam Voices/Asian Correspondent, June 26, 2014

The junta also reactivated its Cyber Scout-initiative, recruiting school children and students to monitor online content for dissidents, and announcedplans forinternet cafes to install camerasso that parents can remotely monitor what their kids are doing.

The toweringmotive of the juntas onlinemonitoring efforts has been recently laid out by outgoing army chief, junta leader andPrime MinisterGeneral Prayuth Chan-ocha:

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Thailands junta extends censorship with mass online surveillance