Comical drive to rein in FB turns sinister

Having failed to force Facebook to shut down more than 100 lese majeste pages, Thai authorities are going after small-fish users and viewers in the country in what appears to be another comical campaign of intimidation.

Tough-talking chief of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) Takorn Tantasith made an abrupt about-turn last week after the content that Thai authorities told Facebook to remove because of its illegal, lese majeste nature remained accessible even though his deadline had passed.

Instead of severing pathways that allowed some 38 million people in the country to connect to the world’s most popular social media platform as he threatened to do earlier, Mr Takorn said something along the lines of: “Fine, let me try again.” In a nutshell, Facebook told the NBTC chief it had yet to receive court orders demanding the web pages be removed.

Mr Takorn told reporters monitoring the passing of the deadline that he would ask the technology crime police to speed up their cases against the targeted web pages, then expressed his satisfaction with Facebook’s so-called cooperation. Of course, the “offensive” pages are still up for more than a billion Facebook users around the world to see, Thailand included.

Having realised what everyone else already knew that it was mission impossible to censor or shut down Facebook, the authorities switched track and moved the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) to the vanguard of the effort. It will target people who leave comments, share content or click “like” on the illegal content and those who simply read or view it.

Admittedly more aggressive, the latest move appears to be heading in the same foolhardy direction. According to a report in the Bangkok Post Sunday, CIB chief Thitirat Nongharnpitak said police are acquiring tools to identify viewers of the content and investigate why they like watching it.

Pol Lt Gen Thitirat also emphasised that watching lese majeste content may be deemed wrongdoing. Does anybody wonder what “tools” the CIB chief is thinking of procuring that could snoop into a citizen’s computer, notebook or mobile phones? Is it even legal for the police to do so? If the police can use some “tools” to spy on your social media behaviour, even investigate why you like watching this and that as Pol Lt Gen Thitirat said, why do we bother having the constitution?

Are the police even aware that Section 32 of the 2017 charter guarantees that people are entitled to the right to privacy and that personal data can’t be used for any purposes except under the law enacted exclusively for public benefit? The CIB chief could be treading on shaky legal ground if he is to use such tools to poke around in the social media activity of any particular groups of netizens.

The problem with this latest lese majeste drive is that it does not end there. While it’s still debatable whether clicking “like” or sharing content that is deemed lese majeste is considered an act of offending the monarchy under the Criminal Code, can simply watching it qualify as a crime?

Besides, Section 112 of the code specifically forbids defaming, insulting or threatening the King, Queen and Heir Apparent. An interpretation by the CIB’s chief that people who happen to “view” or “watch” what may be considered royally defamatory content may be prosecuted on the same grounds as those who committed the insult seems to be stretching the law.

In targeting web viewers, the police could end up running after shadows. How could they prove that any particular users did “view” the content? With thousands of items going through an individual’s Facebook feed each day, how can the spymaster know which one was watched? How many seconds qualify as a glance, and how many may be deemed a view? And how many thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands alleged wrongdoers do the police plan to net in their attempt to trawl the vast and populous social media space?

The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society has also warned people not to exchange information with three lese majeste suspects and fugitives — British journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall, historian Somsak Jeamteerasakul and academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun. It said “following” any of the three is considered an offence. But these three people have more than 100,000 followers. Arrest them all? Or pick some? How to differentiate between innocuous followers and suspicious ones? The questions are endless as the “law and order” drive has taken on a menacing turn.