Thai cyber-activists threaten war on 'Great Firewall'

Thai cyber-activists are planning to launch a “cyber-war” against official government websites to force authorities to formally drop a single gateway Internet initiative that critics have termed "The Great Firewall," local media reported Sunday.

“What we have done so far is only symbolic,” an unnamed representative of the “Thailand F5 Cyber Army,” which has gathered more than 300 cyber-activists, told the Bangkok Post.

“We want the government to realize the extent to which people are against the proposal. We have not yet started serious attacks on the government’s IT system,” he added.

Critics had warned that uniting all Internet services under a single gateway would allow Thailand's military government to monitor and spy on content as well as blocking websites it deems subversive. 

The government, meanwhile, had argued that the plan – which had been discussed in cabinet meetings as early as last June -- was necessary to protect Thailand against unwanted content and to restrict Thai youth from accessing unwanted material.

Earlier this month, thousands of Internet users were reported to have flooded government websites in an effort to force the pages to crash by exceeding their bandwidth capacity.

Websites belonging to the Ministry for Information and Communication Technology, the Ministry of Defense and of Government House were overloaded and left unavailable by the sheer numbers of users trying to access them.

After a June 30 cabinet meeting in which Thailand’s junta chief-cum-prime minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha urged administrators to set up a single gateway, the cabinet repeatedly instructed the Information and Communications Technology ministry in July and August to push for the project’s realization.

After only becoming aware of the project at the end of September, the Thai public reacted with dismay, and tens of thousands of comments criticizing the proposal filled the Internet.

The government responded to the strong reaction by denying that the project had entered the implementation stage, saying the initiative was just an idea floated during a cabinet meeting.

“I have not ordered the government to go ahead with this,” Chan-ocha said Oct. 2. “I merely told them to study it, but there has been some misinterpretation. Right now, this matter is only under study.”

Last Thursday, Somkid Jatusripituk, the deputy-prime minister in charge of economic affairs, told an economic forum in Bangkok that the single gateway plan had been scrapped, claiming it was only ever under consideration and never finalized.

“We will not talk about this any more. If we say we won’t do it, we won’t do it,” he said.

Cyber-activists, however, remain unconvinced amid concerns that the announcement could simply be a tactical move following strong public pressure and that the project could be revived.

They are asking that the government formally withdraw the single gateway project with a cabinet order. 

The group has been training 300 “cyber-warriors” to attack government websites in coming days.

Using mostly applications that automatically refresh targeted websites every second, the attacks led by numerous “cyber-warriors” can keep a website down for several days in a row.

A test attack launched by 30 cyber-activists Wednesday brought the foreign ministry website down in less than five minutes.

“This demonstrates the higher than expected potential of Thais who love freedom and also the inadequate government IT system,” the cyber group representative said Sunday.

The Thai government declined to comment on the planned “cyber-war” when contacted by the Post, but officials had earlier threatened legal action against people participating in cyber-attacks.