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1,893 sites now blocked


DON SAMBANDARAKSA
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/11Jun2008_data008.php

A total of 1,893 web sites are now officially blocked here, according to the government's first official response under the Official Information Act. However, this is a tiny fraction of the 17,883 sites on the latest leaked "blocklist" from the ICT Ministry, while even the National Police Commission's web site once claimed 32,500 sites were blocked.

Freedom Against Censorship - Thailand (Fact) coordinator C.J. Hinke, a lecturer at Thammasat University, said that of 20 questions put to the Official Information Commission, only two had been answered and the rest had been dismissed on national security grounds.


"The essence of the 20 questions was, show us the blocklist, show us the reasons and show us the law," he said.


Fact had submitted its query under the Official Information Act in March last year.

Under the law, officials have to respond within 30 days, or 60 days in unusual circumstances. In this case, they took a year to respond.


Hinke claimed that Internet censorship is illegal and violates 11 articles of the 1997 constitution and at least two in the 2007 constitution. The only legal way to block a site is to get a court order.


Anonymous proxies made up the bulk of the MICT blocklist. Under the cybercrime law, concealing an IP addresses is illegal which implies the end of anonymity and privacy.


"Do we really want to create a surveillance society where every opinion and expression is tracked and monitored and we are perhaps jailed for expressing our thoughts?" he asked.


"The Council of State has declared that Internet censorship is illegal, as has the administrative court," he said.


He said that the ICT Ministry had recently applied for its first court order to block a web site which was offering T-shirts of a dog-faced Buddha for sale in both human and canine sizes.

He also noted that of the 29 "bad" web sites that the opposition Democrat party wanted blocked, one of them was Midnight University's web site which was now under an administrative court protection order specifically preventing it from being blocked.

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