Breaking News: Facebook blackout was at junta's request
Not a technical failure, but a request from the military authority was the cause of the blackout on the Facebook account of 28 million DTAC customers on May 10.
Tor Orland, vice president of Telenor Asia, DTAC's largest shareholder, writes in an email to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that the company received a call from the NCPO to block access to Facebook. The company did so at 14.35:XNUMX p.m.
Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the telecoms committee of telecom watchdog NBTC, denies the report. He is unhappy with the publicity. "If Thailand seems to have so many problems, Telenor is better off investing elsewhere." The military also denies that such a request has been made. DTAC itself has not yet responded.
The NBTC seems to be retaliating subtly because it has announced that it will form a committee that will investigate foreign participation in Thai companies. Under the Telecom Business Act and Foreign Business Act, foreign companies cannot own more than 49 percent of the shares.
If telecom operators violate this rule, they will not be allowed to participate in this year's auctions of the 1.800 and 900 megahertz spectrum, Settapong said.
According to a source at the NBTC, DTAC will be the first to act. Then the two other major telecom companies are examined: AIS and True Corp.
(Source: The Nation, June 11, 2014)
This message should sound like music to the ears of the coup opponents, see censorship!!
But given the circumstances in May, I can understand with a view to safety, social media can also be used in a negative sense, a good example is the Facebook party in Haren, where things got completely out of hand within a few hours .
Not that I want to compare the coup in Thailand with a party in Haren, but I want to indicate that with this medium it is very easy to mobilize large groups of people to a certain area.
And that's why I understand the request, isn't it nice REQUEST? normally orders are only given in the military.
No, it was only short-lived, whether you can speak of censorship here, I stick to prevention, according to my humble opinion.
How voluntary is a request? We have seen here and elsewhere that if someone does not respond to a request, more pressure is applied. They also did not request that the cabinet resign, this was not complied with and they got their way in a different way. I am under no illusion that nothing would have happened if a company had not complied or complied with a particular request.
Censorship is just wrong, sometimes it gets out of hand, but only deal with those people who call for violence or other criminal offenses. Sombat will be taken to court, I wonder if Suthep will follow and will be treated more severely as he went much further. If the army were really neutral then… well, you can guess.