re: "Govt mulls internet gateway to fight crime" (BP, February 20, 2022)
Dear editor,
Imagine your worst nightmare being duly elected prime minister of Thailand, or a worse nightmare unduly making himself Thailand's next dictator prime minister. If you are a fan of Prayut, think Thaksin or proxy as PM. If you are a Move Forward fan, think Thaksin or Prayut 2.0. Would you trust that PM and his or her government with control over a single internet gateway?
Naturally, it would only be used to block criminal activity, "to better control the flow of illegal information online to improve the safety of internet users", as Digital Economy and Society (DES) Minister Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn nobly reassures. It would, happily, be up to the ruling PM and his loyal government to determine what constitutes "illegal information". What could possibly go wrong?
The Thai people will have no more say in dictating what is legal or illegal than justice has today in forming Thai law and its execution to protect those same officially untrustworthy Thai people from the dire threat of understanding Thai affairs so well as to have opinions of well-informed worth, or of sharing those varied opinions on which good people, like those deeming themselves good, often do so reasonably differ.
Things like a single internet gateway and strict laws against the peaceful expression of ideas are obviously needed to protect the Thai people from themselves, lest entrenched social mores evolve towards decency. The reigning Thai government's unremitting efforts to bring to fruition Thailand v.1984 are to be applauded. As so much else is in the land to which happiness is forever being bountifully returned, such selflessness is almost unspeakable.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on MonthDate, 2022, under the title "Thailand 1984" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2267971/house-of-cards
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