Hactivism

With the recent spate of stories regarding alleged lese majeste cases, the jailing of Suriyan Sujaritpalawong, Jirawong Wattanathewasilp and Police Major Prakrom Warunprapha, and the “death in custody” of the latter, PPT hasn’t provided any attention to the actions being taken to contest the military dictatorship’s “single gateway.”

Fortunately, there are several reports that do focus on this attempt by the junta to more broadly censor the internet.

Siam Voices has a round up of recent reports, beginning with Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak telling business leaders: ”We will not talk about this [the single gateway] any more. If we say we won’t do it, we won’t do it…”. But what would he know. He’s only a civilian and he was soon over-ruled and contradicted by The Dictator.

Sending internet traffic through a single gateway, will allow “officials to filter and block undesirable content.” This is usually defined as kids gaming, a bit of porn and some gambling sites, but the real aim is to support “the military junta’s ongoing efforts to monitor and censor dissenting voices…” on the monarchy and those who oppose the junta.

Following outcries, the junta tried to “sell” its plan as some kind of effort to make Thailand a regional digital hub. No one believes that a bunch of toady generals has any interest in business unless to enrich themselves.

Meanwhile, VICE News has a story that outlines opposition to the single gateway from the international hacker collective Anonymous. It apparently began by bringing down “the website for CAT Telecom, the state-run telecommunications company tasked with implementing the gateway…”.

Thailand F5 Cyber Army, reportedly an activist group opposed to the gateway,” tweeted images saying that thousands of CAT Telecom customer logins and passwords had been compromised.”

The state telecom agency denied that it had been hacked, but nobody believes them. Like the junta itself, CAT deals in falsehoods.

Given that the military has been anxious to more closely control its population since the 2006 coup, we assume that it will continue to bumble and stumble towards its Great Thailand Firewall.

Anonymous released a statement on Thailand:

#OpSingleGateway

Greetings citizens of the world, we are anonymous.

Government of the Kingdom of Thailand, it has come to our attention that you have decided to disregard your citizens, the people of this country, and have persisted to project an unique Gateway to the Internet, in running a system which only benefits yourselves and the giant corporate bodies operating.

We saw the situation in Thailand for the past months going too far, restricting basic access to freedom of speech, protests and basic human rights against anyone who criticized the Thai Junta.

The latest project of the Thai military government is to deploy a single gateway in order to control, intercept and arrest any persons not willing to follow the Junta orders and your so called moral.

No interception systems ever stopped any terrorist attacks, neither any national security threats in Asia or any western countries. It only allows greedy governments and large corporations to get more profits and less freedom of speech for the people of this country.

The land of smile will soon be similar to China, North Korea or any tyranic country providing intrusive electronic systems to spy and prosecute their own citizens having different ways of thinking.

It is unacceptable that you promote your own people, army executives at the Head of the largest Telecommunication operator: CAT Telecom. Any Corporations or individuals helping to deploy this single gateway will be targeted by any electronic means.

We will not only fight against the single gateway project but will expose your incompetence to the world, where depravity and personal interests prevail.

More than 6,000 people died and 10,000 injured in south of Thailand you have no budget to end this daily terrorist genocide killing innocents, but find 15 million USD budget to censor your own citizens. Our Thai brothers will understand what ความไม่สงบในชายแดนภาคใต้ของประเทศไทย means.

Together we stand against the injustice of your Government, tomorrow you will pay the price of your oppression against your own people.

You can arrest us, but you can’t arrest an idea.

We are anonymous.
We are Legion.
United as ONE.
Divided by zero.
We do not forgive Censorship.
We do not forget Oppression.
Expect us.

Anonymous