BANGKOK, Thailand — Tucked away in a coffee shop near Central Bangkok, Phannee Naksuk rushed behind her counter, sprinkling cinnamon on the foam of an iced latte that was beginning to wilt. All around, her dozen customers were stuck on smartphones or laptops, their faces illuminated in faint blue light inside the shady shop.
“This is normal,” she said, noting the near silence of her customers. “Some people come in, order one drink and then just sit and work for hours. When I opened up 11 months ago, I knew I had to have Wi-Fi. Customers just expect it now.”
Phannee’s business reliance on a decent Internet connection is part of the reason why she is so troubled by a recent government proposal to alter the very framework of the country’s Internet.
Thailand, whose Internet currently connects to the world wide web through multiple points, or gateways, is now considering consolidating all the gateways into one central government-controlled point. A move, the government says, to allow for easier monitoring and interception of materials deemed inappropriate.
“Why does the government want so much control over the people?” said Phannee.
Last week, as Thailand’s Prime Minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, stood to receive the UN’s ICTs in Sustainable Development Award in New York, fierce opposition was already growing at home, as details of the proposed change began picking up momentum online.
News of the proposal had first emerged a week before, after a Thai programmer spotted the development in a legally-binding cabinet order and spread it on social media. The wording and suggestions made in the order are explicit.
In Section 1.2 of the June 30 Cabinet Resolution, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology [MICT] is told it must proceed with “implementation of a single gateway to be used as a device to control inappropriate websites and flow of news and information from overseas through the internet system.”
The proposal has since become popularly known to many in the country as “The Great Firewall of Thailand” in a nod to the strict control that China’s party has over its own Internet services.
By international standards, Thailand’s Internet is already considered heavily policed, with its contentious Computer Crime Act of 2007 and an estimated 110,000 websites blocked as of 2010. Freedom House stated the country’s internet was “not free” as of 2014.
Opposition voices now state that the latest move indicates an attempt by the government to once again monopolize control of the Internet, a stricter stance that generally held sway before the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) formed in 1998 and began the slow process of liberalizing the country’s Internet.