Use of Computer Act questioned

The two suspects were yesterday said to be avid participants in the websites they posted information on. This weakened the initial claims that the arrests were part of a crackdown on "smash and grab" rumour-mongering intended to reap profits in the stock market.

The Computer Crime Act allowed action against computer users spreading information deemed detrimental to national security or false information that could cause panic among the public.

Invoking the law was unwarranted and violated the freedom of speech, said Sarinee Achavanuntakul, a committee of Thai Netizen Network (TNN). She insisted she was commenting in her personal capacity, not on behalf of TNN.

Thiranan Vipuchanan and Katha Pajajiriyapong, with both backgrounds of brokers, were arrested separately on Sunday for violating the Computer Crime Act, chapter 14 , which forbid the import of false computer data that could threaten national security or cause public panic.

Thai rumors concerning the King's health condition caused the stock to plunge on October 14. The rumors were mentioned on Bloomberg that day.

Thiranan allegedly posted her translation of the Bloomberg's piece on the Prachathaiwebboard.com, under the user name "bbb". The other suspect, Katha, allegedly posted his contentious information on sameskyboard.org .

Both websites are renowned for its constantly critical content to the monarchy institution - especially after the coup. The Nation has learned that both suspects, especially Thiranan, had been active posters for some time before the October incident.

Sarinee said the charge against Thiranan was unreasonable, because it was just a translation of Bloomberg news piece, which has millions of readers.

"We should start from the question: what kind of information is really "damaging" enough to warrant arrest?,… so if someone is just copying news from reliable sources which adhere to professional standards, e.g. identifying rumors as such, not claiming them to be truth, then it is really up the readers themselves to consider the news carefully" Sarinee said.

And as for the stock index fall, Sarinee insisted, the police had to prove if the suspects were really accomplices in manipulating the market. Only then will the arrests be an acceptable use of Computer Crime Act, she said. But in that case the police should have evoked Securities Act too.

From the Google cache of the problematic page of Prachataiwebboard.com, it shows that 'bbb' posted the alleged comment on October 14 at 6.09 pm. If this reflected the accurate time of her posting, the market had been already closed for a few hours.

The post combined Bloomberg news in English and the translation in Thai, paragraph by paragraph.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn, the webmaster of Prachataiwebboard.com, said "bbb" was the regular poster since the Sep 19 Coup and most of her posts were the translation of English news on Thai politics.

Also on October 17, "bbb" also had a post containing many translation pieces of news from various foreign press agencies related to the rumors of the King's health.

Chiranuch said the police had never contacted her to ask for any information about the case and she did not delete the post. However, as Prachataiwebbaord.com was under maintenance, the exact page of the post and information about webboard users were inaccessible.

Thanapol Eawsakul, the editor of the "Under the Same Sky" journal said he didn't acknowledge anything about the post as the smeskyboard.org had been separated from the journal.

"This is nonsense. How could the police prove that the posts were false information anyway as it said that there was a rumor that . . . , not the fact was . . ."

 "The government needed to find a scapegoat for this rumor thing," Thanapol said.