Gateway won't be pursued if illegal, breaches rights: Prayut
PRIME MINISTER General Prayut Chan-o-cha said yesterday the "single gateway" plan would not be implemented if an ongoing study found it to be illegal and a breach of human rights.
The plan was only at the study stage to see if it should be developed, he reaffirmed.
However, Prayut wondered if people ever asked themselves if social media and the Internet were being wrongly used and if that could negatively affect the young generation and society.
The idea of a single gateway to regulate the Internet has sparked lots of discussion and anger among some groups, who have asked the government to renounce the policy.
At a separate event, Inform-ation and Communications Technology Minister Uttama Savanayana said the single-gateway was a study of how to oversee the use of online channels.
Cyber-security is a challenge for the government’s digital-economy policy, he said, as it is increasingly threatened by fraud, scams, hacking, system attacks and the use of malware for the purpose of cybercrime, terrorism and other destructive acts.
These cyber-threats challenge economic security, people’s lives and the country as a whole, as the government plans for the digital economy, he explained.
At 10pm on Monday, a group of people opposing the single gateway posted comments on the “Citizens against Single Gateway: Thailand Internet Firewall” Facebook page inviting people to undertake a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on some state websites.
The group also posted the IP addresses of these targeted sites.
A source in the IT industry said some of the websites targeted for attack could not be accessed.
Three hours later, the group announced on its website that it was taking a break after the attack, but vowed to continue the DDoS attack unless the government cancels the project.
When asked whether the ICT Ministry would use the law to deal with these people, Uttama said the role of the ministry was “to oversee the reliability of the systems [Internet, online and IT]”.
All state agencies also have their own legal units, he added.
Paiboon Amonpinyokeat, a legal expert on the Internet, said such DDoS attacks could violate the Computer Crime Act.
Government Spokesman Maj-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said the PM had merely instructed state agencies to study the pros and cons of the idea. But he warned that inviting people to attack state websites was breaking the law.
