The big issue: Foxes drafted for henhouse duty

The big issue: Foxes drafted for henhouse duty

Information and Communications Technology Minister Uttama Savanayana (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)
Information and Communications Technology Minister Uttama Savanayana (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)

The discovery of the previously secret plans to pipe the entire internet through one government-monitored tube was made by frequent tweeter @sikachu, whose online name is Prem Sichanugrist.

Three days after a presumably careless clerk posted it at the prime minister’s office’s Public Relations Department website, Sikachu was scanning the summary of the July 14 cabinet meeting, written by Ampon Kittiampon, the cabinet secretary-general. These summaries have an amazingly high Blah-Blah Factor, and Mr Prem deserves credit for persevering through yawn-inspiring blather until, halfway down, a “holy spit” moment:

Government administration and other business. Proceeding from the cabinet meeting of June 30, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology is instructed to check with relevant agencies including the Ministry of Justice and Royal Thai Police on legal requirements to establish the single gateway to serve as a tool to control inappropriate (domestic) sites and the influx of information abroad through the internet. If there is a need for further legislation, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology is instructed to speed up the process, and complete it without further delay. Relevant authorities must help to expedite the establishment of the single gateway, as per the cabinet’s decision.

Mr Prem tweeted twice early on Sept 15, and it still took another week for the story to get legs. After that, and especially with the control master in New York for a week, days of government spin dizzied the nation.

MICT Minister Uttama Savanayana volunteered or “was volunteered” to demonstrate the art of dismounting safely from the back of a tiger. He appeared not to realise that no one has ever successfully done this.

It is possible Mr Uttama went through every possible explanation for the single gateway except for one. As the cabinet minutes make clear, there’s a solitary reason that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha wants a single gateway. It is stated precisely and succinctly. It is to monitor and control everything on the internet, domestic and foreign, incoming and outgoing.

The MICT minister refused to admit this. His initial appearance before the media in Bangkok had jaws dropping as he spun a tale of a government dedicated to helping internet providers by helping them lower their costs. He alleged the order to implement a single gateway is only a discussion, a direct contradiction of Gen Prayut’s signed cabinet instruction. 

Then, right in front of the whole media conference, he came down with a case of Helen Lovejoy Syndrome.

This eponymous malady is named after the Springfield activist who, every time it appears that a political issue is going against her, appeals loudly to The Simpsons and their neighbours with this: “Think of the children!”

Mr Uttama’s ultimate appeal for the single gateway was to appreciate Gen Prayut’s passion for creating an internet stripped of every article, image, book and video considered inappropriate for children. As the young people write on their smartphones so often: Fail. A dish made from cock and bull is too large to swallow.

On Wednesday night, internet users — there is no way to count them but “thousands” seems right — volunteered their F5 keys. No, they aren’t hackers, not in any sense of that often too-inclusive word. If we all are hackers, then no one is. They aren’t even “hacktivists”, really.

The Hit-F5 campaign says something about the organisational skills and determination of Thai internet users. But it says something about the pathetic nature of government websites that 100,000 total visits in a couple of hours, achieved by a few thousand people hitting F5 over and over, can crash the main government information site set up in honour of Gen Prayut’s coup (Thaigov.go.th), the website of the country’s main information technology ministry (mict.go.th) and half a dozen others, including the ministry of defence.

Identical-twin problems. One: these existing servers couldn’t handle truly paltry demands to serve up page views to a truly trifling number of users. Two: When the attacks began — technically, even constant F5-key page-refreshments, when organised like this, are distributed denial of service, or DDoS attacks — these first-level internet entry points to the nation had no ability to ameliorate them.

Fraternal-twin solutions. First, a single gateway will make all internet problems in Thailand worse, with the lone exception of government monitoring and censorship, which will be infinitesimally easier. Even for the unpopular “problem” of all that darned internet information, it’s the wrong solution. Second, the government has very big problems with its own fragile, insecure approach to the internet. It is why Thailand is in the Top 10 of every list of source countries of hacker-penetrated and bot-host sites.

Friday’s statement by the prime minister was far too easily assumed to be a surrender on the single-gateway scheme. Nothing could be more wrong. With two years still in office, the eye of Gen Prayut’s government is not attracted to making a secure internet, friendly to citizens and business.

The programme is well in motion to establishing a great firewall with as much control over the Thai internet as Beijing has over China. And then tightening it. In some ways, it is already ahead of China in this campaign. Not even the firewall builders of Beijing have come up with the idea of a single internet gateway.

Alan Dawson

Online Reporter / Sub-Editor

A Canadian by birth. Former Saigon's UPI bureau chief. Drafted into the American Armed Forces. He has survived eleven wars and innumerable coups. A walking encyclopedia of knowledge.

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