The old fake '404 Not Found' routine

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The old fake '404 Not Found' routine

Published: 18/02/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Database

Thailand's Thought Police have been busy making sure that any unpleasant thoughts are quickly forgotten, or at least not echoed anywhere on the Internet, not just on web pages. It is nice to know that the newly empowered ICU Ministry can now block XML requests that are objectionable, not just web pages.

One of the pet peeves of people using Twitter is the fact that updates on the micro-blogging site are limited to 140 characters. Many URL shorteners have popped up such as the not so short tinyurl.com to bit.ly or zi.ma. The idea is to shorten http://www.thisisaverylongurl.com/this/that/theother to something more manageable like http://tinyurl.com/ag4a39.

However, one of the country's top ISPs now blocks any XML request with the term "lese majeste" in it. This was uncovered by one of my programming friends who I shall not name who was experimenting with URL shortening and came across an error where bit.ly went quiet on certain requests. Upon some experimenting, it appeared that it was the ISP that was replacing any HTTP request, whether it was one for a web page or one calling for a web service, with a fake "404 not found" page.

Therefore a program, and his was a Windows Mobile Twitter client, that called bit.ly for URL shortening services with the offending keywords, would not work as instead of the request, bit.ly would be given a 404 not found error that the ISP had substituted.

The programmer writes on his blog that it is a short-sighted, easy approach that does not work anyway and only serves to make the lives of web developers in Thailand harder. Besides, the banned URL that he experimented with or others that do have questionable content can easily be read anyway through Google Reader or any other news aggregator that is outside of Thailand (in other words, virtually any reader).

For those of you who feel that comments, sympathy or disagreement towards our lese majeste law should be wiped from the Internet, the point is that the ISP here is blocking a web service by keywords. It would block a damning report on Thailand's free speech as much as it would block a dictionary entry with those two words.

Is the act of shortening a URL that has those two words in it illegal? If not, then why is it banned in Thailand?

Interestingly enough, the owner of that ISP was the same company that was caught smuggling nuclear centrifuge parts into North Korea in consignments labelled as telecommunications equipment a few years ago, but that is besides the point.

A few years ago, I visited Software Park's summer Java Camp for high school students. One of the many questions I asked the youngsters was if they knew about TOR (The Onion Router) and other ways to circumvent state censorship. The answers were quite shocking: "Old guy, where have you been?" one answered. Everyone knows how to use TOR, it's part of your household first-aid cabinet. Shocking, that is, as I never thought of myself as an "old guy."

TOR is a series of routers that anonymously routes traffic through multiple layers (like an onion) and destroys the logs thereof, making it impossible to trace an Internet request. I am sure that anyone running TOR would fall foul of the Thai Cybercrime law's clause of having to keep any other relevant information for 90 days, the word "any" being awfully fuzzy. The point is that TOR is used by freedom fighters, child porn mongers and inquisitive children just wondering what the government is blocking in equal numbers.

So has it worked? To the casual surfer, perhaps, but even I, the old guy, have had no problems accessing Giles Ungpakorn's Red Siam manifesto which the powers that be have tried to banish. Does reading it make me love the monarchy less? No. Does it make me think that Giles is a desperate guy whose brain registers are one bit short of a byte? Most definitely.

Regardless of whether censorship is good or bad, the way it is being dished out is only sowing the seeds of contempt between a young computer literate generation and a generation of old guys (well, older than me at least) who think they are doing the right thing.

The old me would have ranted about how Orwell's vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four is becoming true; how NewsSpeak is being made real through censorship and how the ICU Ministry is Orwell's Ministry of Truth. However, at this juncture I am far too tired to even begin. Instead, I shall fire up Tor, Freenet and all these other gizmos I have to see what the free side of the Internet is viewing.

About the author

Writer: DON SAMBANDARAKSA

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crocodilexp

Discussion 9 : 12/01/2010 at 03:37 AM9
I just got a fake 404 today.

Last year it used to less sinister, showing an ungrammatical "This page cannot found" message (maybe intentional subversion, but more likely cute Thai quirk of not bothering to check or fix a mistake).

The one I got today was a 404 page copied exactly from Internet Explorer and looking authentic... but I was using Firefox, and page looks normal through a proxy :)

Fake 404 is awful beyond censorship. It means "your page is broken / does not exist". If a democratic society censors something, they should be upfront and say "it's censored by law", and not "it does not exist, try later".

All these measures amount to just a hassle -- for technically savvy it takes under 1 min to actually see any blocked content.
lalan

Discussion 8 : 25/02/2009 at 07:16 PM8
I think the censorship is being done with high proficiency, Unlike many things here in the "land of smiles".They should be commended for their diligent work. Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany would be proud.
shadow

Discussion 7 : 24/02/2009 at 10:34 AM7
There was related article two days ago about the "internet police" and the monitoring of websites and how this was all related to "national security." Anyway, when "someone" made the comment that every country had similar laws such as the "lese" laws here and went on to cite the US would have the FBI visit and arrest anyone, in the name of national security" who threatened the president. I went on to correct the misinformation and wrote that anyone (citizens and non-citizens alike) could say anything they wanted about the president as long as they did not threaten the president with bodily harm. I also mentioned that free speech was guaranteed by the US Constitution. A few hours later all comments "mysteriously"disappeared and a slightly different article was posted. AND ... THE most interesting thing about the "new" article is that it is the only article I have seen posted here that that has NO way to "reply" to the article by the readers. What happened? Does this look strange to you too? Check it out ...
The "lese" laws here do not affect me, since I only have love and total respect for HM The King and the institution. However, it is disconcerting when so many other "conversations" are monitored and deemed to be objectionable. I thought that was something to only happen in places like Burma or some communist countries, but evidently not.
AG

Discussion 6 : 23/02/2009 at 02:21 PM6
To M. Thompson, Discussion 5:

That's probably one of the most hilarious paragraphs I've ever read.

Did you really need to pack fistfuls of grandiose terms like "submerged in dark layers of corruption" and "the light of truth" into your pointless whining about how someone at ThaiVisa.com deleted some of your posts? If you're always that absurdly pompous, no wonder they deleted your posts.

And what does any of that have to do with the article at hand?
M. Thompson

Discussion 5 : 23/02/2009 at 12:46 PM5
Most internet forums are controlled by cliques of ego-centric wannabe anarchists who thrive in the anonymity of the web. This type of irresponsible behavior is a direct consequence of modern permissive society where everyone is important and no-one is responsible. The pathetic level of power exercised by a 'moderator' on a forum such as ThaiVisa.com encourages many individuals to indulge in excesses of maliciousness and the further abuse of their so called authority by wholesale deletions of any type of rebuke no matter how reasonable and mild in nature. Is it any wonder then that people of this ilk, who don't care one whit for others, will do nearly anything under the protective mantle of government authority? This is an unwinnable situation because the cause is rooted in human nature, which never changes; and except for brief moments of glory is submerged in dark layers of corruption ruled by those with eyes in which the light of truth never shines
john's mate

Discussion 4 : 22/02/2009 at 11:22 PM4
Yeah so if you want to research it and the site you are using has the name of the term you are looking up in the url then you are screwed but not for doing anything illegal - how could looking up the legal background of the term be illegal.

to the author - good article, but its not "newsspeak" - its "newspeak" as in new - speak.
good reference, but a quick google of an unsure term would make it better.
Dave Williams

Discussion 3 : 21/02/2009 at 10:00 AM3
TOR does not work except against inept attempts to control internet access. The use of TOR is very easy to identify and the user of TOR's real ip address can be found in mere seconds.
Mark Lamerton

Discussion 2 : 19/02/2009 at 12:49 PM2
Don: The article was great until you said this: "Does reading it make me love the monarchy less? No. Does it make me think that Giles is a desperate guy whose brain registers are one bit short of a byte? Most definitely."

Why do you think you have to put your opinion of the monarchy and Giles into a technical piece about blocking websites and XML? Is it some sort of politically correctness? Giles is a highly regarded academic who has produced a remarkable manifesto - but I don't think that's the point in this article.

I became keenly aware of the disingenuous nature of some Bangkok Post writers when I went onto Apple's support forums a few months back and complained about an iPod touch download update of 260MB which, as it turned out, had no benefit for Thai users since we don't have an iTunes store in Thailand from which we can directly access podcasts. The forums are international - but who should reply to my question? None other than Graham Rogers from the Bangkok Post. Graham did his best to rebuke any criticism I had of Apple (a company I'm a great fan of).

After a series of posts, I thanked him for his help, after which he posted this:

You can catch up with me again in the Bangkok Post on Wednesdays.

“I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.”

How very Thai, I thought. After that I stopped using Apple's supposed "community" forums.
John in BKK

Discussion 1 : 18/02/2009 at 01:35 PM1
The term 'lese' isn't blocked. If you do a Google search, you'll see a 404 only on the term 'majeste'.

Welcome to 1984!

The old fake '404 Not Found' routine