Govt threatens action against masked FB users

Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit said he and party legal experts would meet today to discuss legal action against the Facebook users, who use the white mask from the Hollywood movie ‘V for Vendetta’ as their profile photo.
However, an information technology legal expert, Paiboon Amornpinyokiat, said expressing one’s political view or stance through a statement or posting symbolic photos were not in violation of either criminal laws or the Computer Crimes Act – as long as the statement or images were not false, contrary to others’ interests, or slandered others.
Prompong said the government believed the group belonged to the same team that defaced the PM’s Office website recently with derogatory messages.
On Saturday, the FB users posted a message that said: “The people’s army has awakened. We pronounce here that we will bring down and eradicate the Thaksin regime from Thailand.”
This message was posted repeatedly on websites of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the Facebook pages of Thaksin, his sister PM Yingluck Shinawatra, his son Panthongtae “Oak” Shinawatra, and the Government House website Thai Khu Fah.
The “V mask” photo was widely used by Facebook users to protest against Channel 3’s move to block the final episode of its Nuamek TV drama series early this year.
Not long after the message was posted on the Pheu Thai website, a user with the title of Thaksin and his photo in the profile, posted a message attacking party members for being “idiots” to allow the derogatory messages to be posted. But the post by “Thaksin” was later removed.