Anti-Cyber Crime Bill for Thailand

Thailand is experiencing online fraud similar to the worldwide trend. Moreover, it is increasing from day-by-day in forms that range between theft of domain names at narak.com, Sanook.com, and thailand.com to computer hacking, said Yanaphol Yangyuen, Police General, Department of Special Investigation, in a report to the National Legislative Assembly. The Nation published this in the later part of June 2007.

A law to stop cyber crime in Thailand was implemented on July 18, 2007. The law, 2007 Computer-related Crimes Act, a first of its kind for the nation, would control the Internet. SEAPA published this in news on July 10, 2007. The Act would give the Thai police the right to impound PCs from private places if they think that an individual is breaking the new laws.

The Act outlines twelve Internet crimes that would bear punishments varying from six months prison term and a Bt 10,000 fine to 20 years of jail and a Bt 300,000 fine. It also describes the state officials' power and the ISPs' legal responsibilities. The Nation published this.

Just after the military coup in September, Thailand's information and communications technology minister was officially designated to censor the country's Internet.

The Thailand government plays a repressive role on the country's cyber activities that is quite comparable to Burma, Pakistan, Syria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen and Iran. Very recently, the government banned about 50,000 websites including anti-monarchy sites, anti-government sites, commentaries and sexually provocative sites.

A clause within the act mandates ISPs to store the data on Internet traffic for a minimum of 90 days so that authorities can examine the subscribers' IP addresses and determine which specific websites they visit.

According to 'Dr. Jattas Phakcharoenpon of Freedom against Censorship Thailand', the cyber crime Act is though devised to stifle online crime, but it would interfere with the individual's privacy. IRRAWADDY published this in news on July 12, 2007.

Moreover, it will be difficult for police to access the information before seizing a computer. May be they have to simply spy on every human being until something menacing comes up (like spam mails or porn mails).

Related article: Anti-Spam Laws may not Solve the Problem

» SPAMfighter News - 7/25/2007