Censorship of Thai websites by the police

September 1, 2009

Interestingly, when I was trying to update my blog and upload images, I was posed with an alert that stated “Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information which is deemed to violate national security.”

Sure, I was uploading a porn photo, or trying to bet on my favourite Thai horse, or I was planning to assassinate the king. All I was doing was merely posting this article on presentations. I think they need to upgrade their filtering processes and hardware. I wonder what they REALLY censor.

filtered-by-thai-police

On the other hand, Thailand is wayyy ahead of Malaysia in terms of broadband connectivity. Here’s a banner that I encountered at a local Chiang Mai shopping mall that touts 10 Mbit broadband connections at a mere 1490 Baht per month (at present, that’s about USD43.80 or RM154 per month). In Malaysia, there isn’t even an option for anything beyond 4 Mbit! So much for progress.

thai-broadband

by TheBackpackr |
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Musings, Personal
  • Paulski

    Hi mate.. I like the site and I live in Thailand. There are probably about 3-4k sites that are banned from within Thailand, most of them are porn related. However, a large number of sites have been banned lately that are due to ‘national security’ issues. Many of these sites are those that defame the monarchy and so you may well have come across one of those sites.

    As for internet in Thailand, it has recently got much better in terms of speed but the main provider here, ‘True’ can be temperamental at times. Having said that not had any problems in the past few months.

    Laterz

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