Maintaining control of the internet

The Abhisit Vejjajiva regime remains grimly determined to control access to the internet, in the interests of, it says, “national security.” The Bangkok Post reports, in its Database section, that while the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) raised the issue of BlackBerry devices and the Computer Crimes Act, to decide that BlackBerry complied with the law, it has given rise to a broader question of control.

Prinya Hom-anek of the Thailand Information Security Association (TISA), wants the government to  concentrate on “the main purpose of the [Computer Crimes] law [which] is to identify users who employ multiple devices to access the Internet.” Hence, the big “national security issue” is “unregistered prepaid mobile phone users [who]… buy mobile Sim and gain access to the internet and perform actions which violate the Computer Crime Act but which are hard to trace.” Like Singapore and Malaysia, there is a need, he argues, for registering prepaid SIM cards.

Thailand tried this in 2005, and then it fell apart.

Surangkana Wayuparb of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec), “who oversaw the main draft of the Computer Crime Act,” agreed with the idea of registering prepaid SIMs in the interests of “national security,” saying that “many countries” require this. A quick search suggested that the main places where registration is required are: Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, South Africa and Switzerland. The reason for registration is usually said to be “terrorism” or “cyber-crime.” Most countries do not require it.

For Thailand, while its initial attempt at registration was related to southern bombings, the reason now seems to have to do with the broad notion of “national security” that is now little more than protecting the monarchy. In this context, the regime is worried by the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet. The report states that there are now “more than 10 million mobile users connected to the Internet. Some 800,000 of these are smart phone users and less than 50 percent of these are prepaid.”

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