About myself, works at Thai Netizen Network, and what I think they are critical issues we should think more about when it comes to human rights, civil rights, political rights, and consumer rights in this Digital Age. Prepared for a workshop with Cambodian friends in Phnom Penh. *** Tada! This time with Venn diagram! ***

1. 5 August 2015
What ITalk AboutWhen I Walk About Online Freedom inThailand
@bact Arthit Suriyawongkul

2. Contents
✤ About myself
✤ About my work at Thai
Netizen Network
✤ Online freedom critical issues
in Thailand
✤ Critical issues at Global level
and Future challenges

3. I described
myself as
a “pedestrian”.
I’m walking to people and issues.
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4. As a Pedestrian
✤ I walk into different people in different
places.
✤ I talk with them, “How things going?”,
“What’s new?”, “But why?”, “Are you
okay?”.
✤ I write a ‘journal’ about my journey.
Connecting observations and making
sense out of it.
✤ I try different paths. See who else I should
walk to, and who else I can walk with.
✤ I need freedom of movement. Information
wants to be free.
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5. “Overcome cultural differences and information
inaccessibility to enable global knowledge societies.
Accelerate the emergence of informed citizen
towards free and participatory cultures.”
My career goal
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6. Thai Netizen
Network
✤ Emerged in December 2008 as a
response to 2007 Computer-related
Crime Act (passed after 2006 Coup)
✤ Initially working on the issues of
censorship and online media
freedom. Later expanding to
violations of user rights, privacy,
and policy participation.
✤ Officially registered as
“Foundation for Internet and Civic
Culture” in 28 May 2014
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7. Activities
• Monitoring digital rights situations
• Participating in policy process
• Organizing forums, talks and
informal meetings on digital culture
• Giving consultation to human rights
defenders and lawyers, in the area
of digital security and the use of
electronic evidences
• Publication and translation of
relevant documents

8. Policy Participation
✤ Monitoring law and policy changes and proposals
✤ Making analysis and statements on key issues
✤ Involving in existing forums (of different natures)
✤ Supporting the creation of multi-stakeholder forums
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9. Monitoring and
Analysis
✤ Visualizing policy changes
✤ Translating relevant news and
reports from other languages,
other countries
✤ Communicating through
different media channels
✤ Informing human rights
defenders and organizations
✤ Thematic researches
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10. 10

11. 11

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14. “Digital
Security” Bills
✤ Dec 2014-Jan 2015 the Cabinet passed 10
bills on digital economy and society,
including National Cybersecurity Bill
✤ 20,000 signatures within two weeks on
change.org
✤ Letter submitted to National Legislative
Assembly, National Reform Council, and
Constitution Drafting Committee
✤ After that, Electronic Transaction
Development Agency (the law drafting
team), NLA, NRC, Council of State, and
Law Reform Committee all held
consultation meetings/public hearings
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15. 15

16. Thailand Internet
Governance Forum
✤ 23 July 2015 — Thailand’s first
✤ 360+ participants
✤ 13 panel/roundtable
discussions/workshops
✤ 15+ organizations involves in
preparation of the forum
✤ Businesses, civil society
organizations, academics,
government agencies
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17. 17

18. 18

19. Critical issues inThailand:
Broader view
✤ National security-led policy making (civilian and military gov alike)
✤ Arbitrary interpretation of national security
✤ “Avoiding-liability” culture within justice system (or civil servant
system in general)
✤ Officers tend to routinely forward cases to the court without
questioning the legitimacy of charges be filed, if it’s a national
security or monarchy related
✤ Court of justice less likely to interpret law to set a new ground in
favor of civil rights, if it will affects national security/monarchy
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20. Critical issues inThailand:
Digital rights
✤ 2007 Computer-related Crime Act
✤ 1) Intermediary liability 2) Abused as online defamation law 3) Court order as
rubber stamp to block websites (no real check and balance in practice)
✤ Upcoming National Cybersecurity Bill
✤ Effectively “Cyber Martial Law” — National Cybersecurity Commission will
has broad power to order public and private bodies and individuals to do or
not to do anything to protect national cybersecurity [Section 33 and 34]
✤ Upcoming Data Protection Bill
✤ Question of operational independency — National Cybersecurity Agency will
served as secretariat office of Data Protection Commission
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21. Critical issues inThailand:
Looking forward
✤ Multi-stakeholderism governance model as an approach
(instead of regulation by the State) is being mentioned more.
Although the ways how people understand the term are still vary.
✤ Can be supported by ‘neutral’ forum that people feel comfortable to share (without
fear of legal or other risks)
✤ Digital rights are getting more acceptance as human rights.
Thanks to global movement and incidents.
✤ Regional collaboration on research, monitoring, advocacy,
impact litigation, and documentation.As issues are more of cross-
border nature.
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22. Global critical
issues
✤ The “Feudal Internet”
✤ Control over one’s own data (=life).
✤ Stricter intellectual property regime
✤ Control over the use of one’s own tools
✤ Should innovation need a permission?
✤ New Digital Divide: Data-driven
discrimination
✤ Surveillance (Communication - Street level
- “Smart City”)
✤ Cross-border data flow
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23. Digital Opportunities
and Discriminations
✤ Thinking through 3 key elements of Digital Age
✤ Data (including Identity)
✤ Computation
✤ Network (including [dis]connected devices)
✤ For a citizen in this Digital Age, to achieve Self-determination (the
process by which a person controls their own life), an ability to
understand, secure, and make use of data, computation (code), and
network for his or her own interest (and preventing others to use
against) is essential.
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24. Future challenges…
(you can’t do it wrong withVenn diagram)
Data
Network
Computation
Net neutrality
(which activities are
prioritized?)
Infrastructure ownership
(who can get connected?)
Sensory
citizenship
(whose ‘votes’ got
counted?)
Big Data
(Volume,
Variety, Velocity)
LinkabilityIdentity
(do you exist?)
Citizen
science
Metadata
Transparency
(who audit the code/
coders?)
“Precrime”
(Predictive crime control,
systemic prejudgement,
algorithmic bias)
Anonymity
Peer-to-peer
network
Cloud
storage
Cloud
computing
go across nation-
state bordersConsumer rights
as Civil rights
Media
convergence
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Behavior
Re-identification

25. Links
✤ “Pedestrian was killed” photo from https://www.flickr.com/
photos/mlcastle/269644482
✤ “Feudal” photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Reeve_and_Serfs.jpg
✤ Thailand Internet Governance Forum https://igf.in.th
✤ Netizen Report 2014: Year of Surveillance https://
thainetizen.org/docs/netizen-report-2014/
✤ Privacy Report 2014 https://thainetizen.org/privacy-
report-2014/
✤ You Have No Control Over Security on the Feudal Internet
https://hbr.org/2013/06/you-have-no-control-over-s
✤ Data and Discrimination https://www.newamerica.org/oti/
data-and-discrimination/
✤ Empowering Digital Self-Determination http://
mediax.stanford.edu/pdf/MXoct2012DSD.pdf
✤ More links in each photo and in that Venn diagram
✤ This presentation is available on Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/arthit
✤ Distributed under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License feels free to share,
copy, modify, do it whatever you like, no
permission is required.
✤ Contact me: arthit@thainetizen.org
✤ Thai Netizen Network channels
✤ https://thainetizen.org
✤ https://www.facebook.com/thainetizen
✤ https://twitter.com/thainetizen
✤ https://www.youtube.com/user/thainetizen
✤ https://marathon.in.th
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