The new military lineup that moved into formation on Oct 1 has quickly unveiled plans to reinforce Thailand's "cyber army". Such mentions of this opaque force in the past have usually been a warning of another tightening of Big Brother-like surveillance, accompanied by arrests. The cyber army, frequently touted for 15 years but never publicly revealed, supposedly exists to protect the country from a cyber war. Perhaps this time, the Royal Thai Armed Forces can be persuaded to step up their protection while also allowing citizens more freedom online.
The promise to increase the size and scope of this cyber army came from Gen Pornpipat Benyasri, the new chief of the defence forces (formerly known as the Supreme Commander). In practically his first action after he was officially promoted from his position as chief-of-staff of the armed forces, Gen Pornpipat called a meeting of 300 officers to outline his policies, with cyber security near the top. He wants a bigger force of better trained troops to "solve counter-terrorism problems within 30 minutes".
It must be stressed that the "cyber army" is not just a military project. The original plan was drawn up directly under the government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin deceptively created the first Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MICT) with the promise of promoting online freedom, open internet access and huge digital advances in education. None of that happened, and every prime minister after Thaksin has made it worse.
The elected Yingluck Shinawatra government promised in 2013 the start of a new five-year plan to regulate cyber security and fight future cyber attacks. All the plan did was make it even easier a year later for the new military regime to ramp up control of the internet to previously unimaginable levels. Within a week, hundreds of websites had been blocked and military officers ordered research and content providers to use their systems to monitor and analyse citizens' online activity.
Similarly, the 2006 coup-installed lawmakers used Thaksin's bait-and-switch tactics to get and pass an initial Computer Crime Act (CCA) in 2007. The promise was that it would provide much-needed consumer protection against the already rising online crime of the early 2000s. But they produced a security-laden bill of little use except to ban websites, punish people even for viewing them, and provide large amounts of money to set up monitoring stations for the surveillance of Thai citizens. The "improved, upgraded" CCA-2, enacted under the current military regime, has stripped away even more freedoms.
Meanwhile, online fraud has risen by several orders of magnitude, and consumers have gained little relief. People defrauded online must try to resort to 20th-century laws to deal with keyboard perpetrators. No legal protection exists or is pending for people hoodwinked in credit- or ATM-card scams. A glitch that causes the loss of a transaction in a banking app cannot be fixed legally, only if a bank wants to fix it.
Gen Pornpipat's emphasis on digital security is well taken. However, it will only earn people's support if he can resist the urge to expand secret government control measures even further. At the moment, far too many resources -- money, and tech-savvy people -- are involved in suppression of speech, and trapping people on spurious charges such as "harming the image" of the country and the regime. It is time for a proper, consumer-friendly Computer Crime Act. Thaksin's moribund promise to bring education into the digital age needs to be properly implemented.
A "cyber army" is as necessary for national defence as the regular armed forces. But just as the Royal Thai Army helps out with floods and fires, so Gen Pornpipat's cyber army should work more with people instead of against them.