War on web pornography heats up in Thailand
By Suzanne Nam
February 8, 2006
The Information and Communication Technology Ministry (ICT) is taking another crack at banishing pornography from the country, this time by using hundreds of cyber watchers and closed-circuit television (CCTV) in post offices.
Just a few months after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that the government would begin to shift its focus to an agenda aimed at curing social ills, including pornography, ICT Minister Sora-at Klinpratoom said earlier this week that today will see the start of an initiative that will be executed by hundreds of employees and backed by tougher regulations, with the aim of ensuring that the country's decency laws are observed.
The ICT has been blocking illegal websites for years, but, according to a spokesman, "it has been nearly impossible to stop people from surfing illegal sites," due to the open nature of internet communication technology and the proliferation of websites with obscene content. The ministry estimates that there are more than one million websites with content that violates the law, and these pornographic websites get about one million hits from inside Thailand every day, Sora-at said yesterday.
So far, the ICT has gathered a list of fewer than 2,000 websites with content that is deemed illegal, and has requested that internet service providers (ISPs), such as CAT Telecom (CAT), True and CS Loxinfo, block their users from accessing the sites.
Most internet users access the web through a handful of licensed service providers, all of whom can filter out material from banned websites, said a spokesman at CAT.
"Every [ISP] has a proxy server and all data go through that server before they appear on subscribers' computers," he said. So, it is easy for ISPs to filter content. Users usually don't even know about the filtration process, as banned sites will often come up with normal error messages or "request denied" pages, he said.
The ministry spokesman said that, although they are difficult to breach, filters can stop access to specified websites only, and the ICT has not yet been able to identify every website which violates Thai law.
To get around the problem, the ministry has employed hundreds of so-called "cyber inspectors," who scour the internet to identify websites with nudity or other obscene material. The ICT has its own website, where citizens can report potentially illegal web content, and it recently began giving away parental control software.
Starting today, the ministry is sponsoring a radio show which parents can call to report illegal websites and receive advice on how to monitor their children's internet usage. It has installed a telephone hotline and is monitoring post office boxes to catch people who send printed pornography through the mail.
"People can rent post office boxes, but they don't have to register their names, [and] so, they can use them to send [pornographic] DVDs, books [and] CDs. Starting [today], everyone has to register to have a post office box number, and we will soon have CCTV in some post offices," the ministry spokesman said.
The ministry does not have an estimate of the number of people it suspects of viewing online pornography, but if internet porn is as widespread as estimated by Sora-at, the government's efforts to block websites will have little impact, said telecommunications analysts, who expressed doubt over the government's ability to stop people from accessing online pornography sites, even with the new policies and the cooperation of ISPs.
Although many people use the internet to view porn, "the move will have little impact [on the majority of general users]," as the internet is mainly used for other purposes, such as e-commerce, email, sharing of music and photographs, news information and software downloads, said Piyachat Ratanasuvan, a telecommunications analyst at Siam City Bank Securities.
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