Thailand detains nine for hacks protesting cyber law

BANGKOK: Thai authorities have detained at least nine people on suspicion of hacking, a senior junta official said on Monday, following days of disruption to government websites sparked by the passing of a controversial cyber censorship law. Earlier this month Thailand’s rubber-stamp parliament unanimously approved a new security law that will make it much easier for the junta to scrub the web of content it dislikes.

The broadly-worded bill bans people from uploading anything deemed “in breach of good morality” and empowers a new committee to take down websites. Since the bill’s passing, hacktivists have targeted Thai government websites. Some have been temporarily disabled by so-called denial of service attacks — a type of assault that overwhelms a website using networks of computers — while some hackers claim to have breached government databases and made off with sensitive material. Rumours had swirled for days that the military had made some arrests. But official confirmation only came on Monday. “We have arrested some hackers, there were about nine people and we will continue arresting them,” deputy prime minister Prawit Wongsuwan, the junta’s number two, told reporters.

Since the generals seized power in 2014 national security offences are primarily handled by the military, with confirmation of detentions often only coming days after someone disappears. On Monday police in Bangkok paraded a 19-year-old hacking suspect who had been handed to them by the military after undergoing interrogation for an unspecified number of days. The suspect confessed that he faked an identity and accessed the system (of) the royal police office,” Supaset Chokchai, commander of the national police’s computer crimes unit, told reporters.