Internet Under Surveillance 2004 - Thailand
| Publisher | Reporters Without Borders |
| Publication Date | 2004 |
| Cite as | Reporters Without Borders, Internet Under Surveillance 2004 - Thailand, 2004, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/46e691961e.html [accessed 5 June 2023] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
- Population: 62,193,000
- Internet users: 6,000,000 (2003)
- Average charge for 20 hours of connection: 5 euros
- DAI*: 0.48
- Situation**: difficult
The government filters Internet traffic to fight child-porn but has extended censorship far beyond this kind of material.
Clear government policy and a national constitution (1997) that firmly protects freedom of expression encourage growth of the Internet. More than 10 per cent of Thais have Internet access and news sites are flourishing.
The Internet is regulated by the National Information Technology Committee (NITC), the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), the Telephone Organisation of Thailand (TOT) and the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT). The rise of such bodies has hindered Internet growth more than helped it.
The CAT by law has a minimum 32 per cent share in the country's 18 privately-owned ISPs, which gives the government great influence over them and enables it to impose filtering more easily. No laws specifically regulate the Internet.
Covert censorship
The NITC said in July 2001 it would hunt down "unsuitable content" on the Internet and has since censored material, mostly pornography. But it has also blocked access to online gambling, material criticising the king and even personal webpages that mention official corruption.
The NITC regularly sends a list of banned websites (currently about 1,000) to ISPs, which are required to block them. Some block IP addresses, others domain names, which explains why censorship is not the exactly same in different parts of the country.
The government's filtering method is covert. Users connecting to a censored publication do not get a "access refused" message but one saying "site unknown" or "server error." An easy way round this censorship is to use anonymizers, which are proxies accessible on the Web.
Links
- The Communications Authority of Thailand - www.cat.or.th/eng
- The Nation media group - www.nationmultimedia.com
- Statistics about the Internet in Thailand - http://ntl.nectec.or.th/internet/index.html
- Government site about growth of new technology (in Thai) - www.ictlaw.thaigov.net
* The DAI (Digital Access Index) has been devised by the International Telecommunications Union to measure the access of a country's inhabitants to information and communication technology. It ranges from 0 (none at all) to 1 (complete access).
** Assessment of the situation in each country (good, middling, difficult, serious) is based on murders, imprisonment or harassment of cyber-dissidents or journalists, censorship of news sites, existence of independent news sites, existence of independent ISPs and deliberately high connection charges.
