Thai Police: We'll Get You For Online Social Media Criticism 86
wired_parrot (768394) writes 'After a leading protester of the recent military coup in Thailand made several critical posts in Facebook criticizing the military takeover, Thailand's Technology Crime Suppression Division tracked his location through his IP address and promptly arrested him.. The arrested was meant to send a message to Thailand's online community. Said the police: "I want to tell any offenders on social media that police will come get you."'
Re:FB gave the ip address, thank you! (Score:4, Informative)
I think he was tricked to visiting some site, more likely - and wasn't really trying to hide the ip. or it's a plant pr job.
Anyhow, a while ago, the junta blocked Facebook for the whole country for a while apparently because they had no idea how the internet works and had ordered some "Facebook pages" to be blocked(and later their pr making some comment about wanting to make better filtering for their main internet connection, I can only guess that they want the same kind of MITM capability that nsa is running, I have zero faith in them actually accomplishing that as it's anyones guess if even the friggin isp's in Thai know where their traffic is routed out of the country and how. You can buy residential fiber in many areas in Thailand but you might just as well buy cable due to their fucked up routing).
At least they got scandily clad women in military style clothers singing songs in Bangkok.
Running VPN's to outside Thailand is pretty common too - and if you're wondering why they aren't blocking Twitter, Facebook and Line(it's a whatsup clone that everyone uses) the reason is two pronged: it would get them too much flack and frankly the leader of the Junta doesn't care too much since he's pretty.. how to say.. old ways guy, stuck in old media - but on the other hand if he would block them then his political career would be over due to the uproar(he has a political career now and was about to get age based forced retirement from military later this year).
The reason why the coup hasn't had much effect in about anything except 10-20% drop in tourism is quite simple: the Thais had not been getting anything done in the last year anyways due to unwillingness of police and military to get involved in politics the proper way - they didn't secure the voting, they didn't arrest people who had insurrection charges and were openly plotting overthrowing of the elected government through unconstitutional means(and were charged even - and the cops knew exactly where they were and when).
sue they just went form a paralyzed government(which might have not been doing anything even without extra interference because hey, they're Thais) to a overburdened military ran government with a leader with aspirations to run for next PM himself, he better because technically he needs amnesty after this debacle, but like always he might not even bother with that since if the old Elite ways are kept he wont get charged even if he drives drunk over a cop - and status like that is what the old thais are afraid of losing and that's why they backed the demonstrators with loads of raw cash (when they claim they love the King, what they really love is acting like being royalty in medieval times).
Re:it was bound to happen (Score:5, Informative)
But was it really forbidden to critizise the ruling class in A Brave New World? Wasn't it just that no-one did, because constant fun-and-sport-and-sexytimes made every-one both content and shallow as puddles. (Except the protagonist.) I think you want 1984.