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Thailand Cracks Down On Twitter, Facebook, Etc.
An anonymous reader writes "The ongoing poitical turmoil in Thailand has inspired the country's Ministry of Information, Computers, and Telecommunications to issue a stern warning that all users of the Internet in Thailand must 'use the internet in the right way or with appropriate purpose and avoid disseminating information that could create misunderstanding or instigate violent actions among the public', that 'all popular websites and social networks such as facebook, twitter, hi5 and my space [sic] will be under thorough watch,' and that 'Violators will be prosecuted by law with no compromise.' Thailand has draconian anti-lèse majesté laws which are routinely abused in order to settle political scores and silence dissent, and recently implemented a so-called 'Computer Crimes Act' which appears to be almost solely focused on thoughtcrimes and censorship, rather than dealing with, you know, actual crime. Several Web forums have recently been shut down, their operators charged because they failed to delete 'harmful posts' quickly enough to suit the Thai authorities."
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The worst thing about censorship on the Internet is [REDACTED].
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It's been done already.
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I'm sure there's a tool out there that will tweet your browsing history.
I think you have a serious lack of understanding of how the government actually works.
The government can in fact criminalize or decriminalize anything it wants. I'm not sure what you are refering to happening 300 years ago but every government in the world still has the ability to change laws. Thats part of its job.
It is the peoples job (that would be society) to tell the government how we want the laws set. If we don't like them, its our job to get the government to change them.
Society determines what those 'unalienable rights' are, and the government criminalizes or decriminalizes things to fit those 'unalienable rights'.
The government doesn't exist without societies support.
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But he is correct even if you don't like his logic. Free Speech? Sure, as long as you don't talk about x, y, or z. Oh, and we may add a, b, and c to the restricted list later. And you have to identify yourself - the founders never meant it could be anonymous. The governments (of various countries) chip away at these "inalienable rights" you speak of daily. They'll continue until it comes to "you have the right to speak well of your government". The other rights are just as much in jeopardy.
I've been following this closely as I have a personal connection to Thailand and was last there a couple of months ago, and checking out all the stuff that's been posted online (mainly photos and videos since my Thai is rather poor).
There's an obvious reason why they're cracking down - there really is rampant misinformation being spread. The stuff that gets published almost always includes commentary by whoever posted it which blames one side or the other based on what they say is concrete evidence that their photos or video provide... yet if you look at the stuff, it's obvious it's just wild speculation at best and purposeful stretching of the truth (misinformation) at worst. It's really, really bad. Foreigners are especially bad because they mostly don't fully understand the situation and accept "evidence" at face value.
The main thing that's being contended right now is whether or not the Thai army troops fired live rounds (rather than rubber ones) into the red-shirt protesters (who are unarmed), thus being the cause of the deaths. Most of the videos claim to prove that they are, but there is absolutely no evidence in *any* of the videos that this is the case.
The interesting thing is that there *is* evidence of a third group (labeled as terrorists by the government) who are the ones inciting violence... sniping people from both sides from up on buildings, and so on. There's even a video that shows someone's head getting shot off a few feet away - literally, the brain is lying on the sidewalk and the top half of the head is missing. It's clear they weren't shot by the army, because their assault rifles wouldn't have done that.
Crazy stuff! It will be really interesting to see what follows. Based on how the Thai government operates, this "ban" shouldn't actually stop the flow of information coming out of Thailand, especially since a lot of it is coming from foreigners.