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Rights Groups Urge Thai Government to Curb Powers in New Cybersecurity Act

Zsombor Peter

   Rights groups and IT industry advocates are calling on Thai lawmakers
   to amend a new Cybersecurity Act that they say gives the government
   virtually unchecked power to monitor online data.

   The law sailed through an appointed Parliament unopposed in February,
   in the final months of the military junta that seized power from an
   elected government in 2014. It took effect in May, after a tainted
   general election in March that returned coup leaders to power.

   Despite the return of civilian rule, dissidents hiding abroad have
   continued to disappear or be forced back to Thailand, opposition
   lawmakers have come under sustained legal pressure, and the
   government's most vocal critics have suffered a spate of violent,
   unsolved attacks by armed gangs.

   "When we saw the Cybersecurity Act, we (were) like, 'OK, it's another
   tool that the government is going to misuse to silence human rights
   defenders, to silence human rights activists,'" said Emilie Pradichit,
   director of Manushya, a local rights group.

   The new law breaks cyber threats into three categories based on their
   level of risk or severity: non-critical, critical and crisis. It gives
   the government the authority to act on crisis threats without a court
   order and denies anyone targeted by the law in the cases of a crisis or
   critical threat the right to any appeal.

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