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Thai Premier Spams Nation, Prompts Consumer Outcry
patiwat writes "Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message, signed 'Your PM,' urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents). The new premier was criticized for violating privacy regulations."
The postal code reply would give the government a clearer idea about which parts of the country wanted to take part in the government's attempt to solve the crisis.
Seems more likely that you'll get a sense of where the concentrations are of idiots who believe that they can actually solve a political crisis by sending their postal code in a text message.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
...get the phone company to provide the cell tower location they are connected to....
I'm not sure you comprehend the logistics involved in doing this for tens of millions of users. And besides supposedly, according to the article, people spending the effort to send back the text message will give him an indication of "those who wants to 'help' solve the crisis", not "those who received this message". Otherwise, just pulling the address database from the telecoms would be a helluva lot easier then your method.
This whole attempt, of course, speaks volumes, mostly to the apparent idiocy of a PM who believes that either:
1) The people who respond really want to help (instead of just responding to the novelty of it)
2) People that don't respond want the crisis to continue
3) The people that are intelligent/capable enough to actually provide major support for his efforts would be attracted to his cause by this text message.
I'm betting more that he's actually not an idiot, but has some shady deal/debt with the telecoms.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
This wasn't an emergency communication. It was just a "hi from the new prime minister", and the responses would do no more than give him an idea of the geographic distribution of his support. It isn't even a good survey technique.
Moreover, Thailand has good radio and television penetration. There is one TV for every two Thai people. He could easily have gone on TV and radio.
The cost to send an SMS in Thailand is typically 3 baht. Pre-paid plans on the major carriers (True, DTAC, AIS) all charge about 3 baht per SMS.
The SMS wasn't sent to all mobile phones either. I have 3 phones, and the only one to receive the SMS was the one without Thai fonts.
The papers tried to make a big deal out of it over here, but I haven't met a single person who so much as mentioned it.
Maybe we could view electoral commission letters and tax office demands as junk mail. We may not have given our details personally and they also sent mail to thousands of other people!
sudo mount --milk --sugar
If every politician and businessmen here sent a message to rally people for their cause, we'd end up with dozens of spam messages per day. Actually, I get ~2 spam messages/day from businesses in Thailand already (I live here).
This is abuse of communication, not privacy.
Oh and it was from 'yourPM', no spaces. I got it on my cell, here is the translation:
"I am your new prime minister. I ask that everyone join hands for Thailand / if you are interested in talking with me please send me a postcard to your main postoffice at #9191 (3 baht)"
My thai friends thought the SMS was a prank . . . The majority population feels he became PM through very immoral means, so I can see this SMS message making a lot of people not happy over here . . .
I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that Thaksin (the deposed PM from two years ago) sold all his stock in the telecom and moved the money to Singapore in the weeks before the coup.
Also, the new PM is from a coalition of minor Thai parties and has nothing to do with Thaksin.
This story also appears to be a non-starter in Thailand. I went back to the 18th at thairath.co.th (a Thai language newspaper) and found no mention of this story in the political section.
Anyway, I'm not sure I would consider it spam if Obama had a message stating something like "I, the new President, invite you, the people of the U.S., to join together and help us rise out of our current situation. I welcome your comments." (The picture in the Bangkok Post is too blurry for me to make out every word the Thai PM wrote, but that's the gist of it.) In fact, I fully expect Obama to do something very similar in his first week, though it will be an announcement on TV pre-empting your favorite show. I doubt it will be quite as short or too the point, either.
Put identity in the browser.
I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help Thailand come out of its current {illegible, probably crisis). If you're interested in receiving (illegible, probably information) from me,please send your 5-digit postal code to this number .... (the rest is cut off)
It doesn't seem very spammy. The tone was appropriate, neither common nor overly polite. The Thai language paper I looked through didn't even mention the message. I look at it as just a better version of the required political speech on your first day.
p.s. I know that you were joking about reading (it does have "Thai," though), but I though you might be interested in the content.
Put identity in the browser.
That's a nice theory about the new PM, but as far as I can tell, he's part of a coalition of minor parties and he spoke out over the army coup in 2006. He was actually supported by the King, not the military.
Admittedly, the Suvanabhumi airport fiasco and the removal of Somchai, the democratically-elected PM was sad, but there's no way to know how corrupt those elections were. A vote sold for two beers when I lived there. The PPP (Somchai's party) was apparently dissolved for buying votes, though there's some evidence that it was business as usual.
Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin's party) was also elected several times by gaming the Bangkok vs. upcountry political system and throwing so much pork at the outer provinces that everyone voted for him. Hey, who wouldn't vote for an extra month's salary in cash and interest-free loans?
Since The recently-deposed PM was Thaksin's brother-in-law and one of the richest families in the country, and Thaksin was extraordinarily corrupt even by Thailand's standards, your propoganda makes me doubt you're a disinterested party in the manner.
The King has been the only thing keeping Thai politics remotely sane since it went constitutional, and his death will let the dogs loose.
Put identity in the browser.
GOOD DAY TO YOU SIRS OR MADAM
I AM [PRIME MINISTER OF KINGDOM OF THAILAND]. I HAVE BUSINESS PROPOSITION TO MAKE YOU. Have URGENT POLITICAL CRISIS to get out of the country; need you to send 10c ([TEN CENTS]) to me and it's yours.
Is NOT pyramid scheme
Signed,
[Thai prime minister]