Gleeful authoritarians are watching

The puppet National Legislative Assembly gave the military junta its new toy. Armed with a revised Computer Crimes Act, repression just got easier. This is the beginning of a story at the Bangkok Post:

Thai democracy on Friday showed that 168 votes easily defeats 350,000 votes. The green shirts who promised to return happiness to the people handed it to themselves, and called it a New Year’s present that will never stop giving back.

The new Computer Crime Act (CCA 16) replaces that old, worn-out CCA 07. Sure, the old one put a lot of people in prison for a lot of years, but not enough and not long enough. Authorities had to go to court and stuff, and now they won’t have to do that very much.

But don’t worry, because if you have nothing to hide and you’re not doing anything wrong, you have absolutely nothing to fear from the world’s vaguest computer law. And that’s straight from the deputy prime minister in charge of security.

The dictatorship needs the revised law to “protect” the monarchy and to “protect” itself. No opposition, public or private is permitted.