Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Banned For Thai Officials

[george]

Ruling on email gets a panning

BANGKOK: -- Academics have warned that the outgoing government's resolution to stop officials from using foreign email providers may be unconstitutional.

A letter dated January 7 issued by the Secretariat of the Cabinet informed all provincial governors that the Cabinet had made the resolution in December for government officials to stop using private, and especially foreign, email providers to communicate official matters within one year.

Officials who are directors or in higher positions must stop using foreign email providers within three months. The letter stated the resolution was made in order to "protect official information".

Dr Sriprapha Petcha-ramesree of Mahidol Univer-sity's Human Rights Studies Programme said she was afraid the Cabinet resolution would contradict the rights and freedom principals written in the constitution.

Furthermore, email systems provided by the government's offices are not reliable and have limited capacity, she said.

Dr Thaweesak Koananta-kool, former director of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, said the Cabinet resolution only applied to official matters, not private communication.

He said the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission had conducted a study last year and found that four out of every 10 government officials were using Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo in communicating official matters.

Thaweesak said many people who use free email providers may have never read the "privacy policy" of these providers that allows the providers to read their users' emails and attached files.

For example, Gmail's privacy notice states that "Google"s computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying information to you, delivering advertisements and related links, preventing unsolicited bulk mail (spam), backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail".

Thaweesak said many government officials had already violated the Office of the Prime Minister's rule on "official secrets" by using these free email providers and the Cabinet's resolution would protect the country from the risk of losing official secrets.

Dr Naruemon Thabchumpon of Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science warned the government should not have confused a technological problem with the freedom of communication.

"The order doesn't make sense. This has nothing to do with national security. If the government is worried about hackers, the ICT has to work to solve the problem," she said.

Naruemon said she had not seen the order but she would continue using foreign email providers in her work as they were more available and effective.

-- The Nation 2008-02-04

[nikster]

Sounds horrible at first, but makes perfect sense as it's only for official matters.

I would think any employer can ask employees to only use the internal email system for business communications. That way a corporation can ensure its email communications are under its own control.

As for government not having good enough email servers... well.... that seems like a problem that could be solved given a modest amount of money. Setting up an email server isn't exactly rocket science

[ajarnmark]

This shows the sorry state of Thai educational system and their so called academics. Are they really good for anything except for creating storm in the tea cup?

Thai Academics? Sounds oxymoron to me.

It is a recognized fact that everywhere in the world, one must use the official mailing system for official purposes. For their private jobs they can use anything they like.

I just wonder why they just simply ban commercial email within the office intranet so no one can access and use it during office times. But again TIT

[Crushdepth]

Sounds horrible at first, but makes perfect sense as it's only for official matters.

Absolutely makes sense and is a standard requirement from any government (or sane employer) that needs to protect sensitive/confidential information. Broadcasting it in the clear via free email providers is a joke. A lot of these services even ask people to identify their occupation as 'government' or 'military' in the sign up procedure. Of course, this is just coincidence :-)

However, from the government employees perspective the main reason they are using these free email providers is that their own 'official' services are frequently so appallingly bad that they are just unusable.

[nikster]

I just wonder why they just simply ban commercial email within the office intranet so no one can access and use it during office times. But again TIT

Probably the very same reason they can't set up internal email servers that work

I am not going into the educational system - it's a sad state of affairs that shows absolutely no signs of improving.

[jfchandler]

Just by way of comparison, you might be interested to know that fair numbers of U.S. universities have been turning over their student and sometimes also administrative/faculty e-mail systems to providers like Google and Hotmail, and those companies have been receptive to setting up locally tailored solutions.

The California State university campus where I formerly worked, 35,000+ students, used to have nothing but grief in trying to main its e-mail system and servers onsite. Something was always going down or wrong, and they were relying on a combination of vendor provided systems and local/university staff support. It always seemed a terrible solution. The vendors didn't really know the campus. And the local IT folks didn't really understand all the nuts and bolts of the vendor provided solutions they were maintaining/overseeing.

My former campus for now has kept its own e-mail systems, but lately changed providers trying to get a better result. But there has been a fair amount of movement in recent years among other big campuses in the U.S. to turn over their systems to the BIG BOYS of e-mail. I think they figured, if Hotmail and Google can support the world, they can probably support a university...

..Not that the same solution makes sense for the Thai government. Just to note, the Thai govt. isn't the only institution that struggles to have a function/operating e-mail system. Though, from what I've heard, theirs certainly is far worse than ours!!!! Hehehehehe....

[britmaveric]

Lot of thai businesses use free web base accounts... bizzare, but they do.

[ozymandious]

Lot of thai businesses use free web base accounts... bizzare, but they do.

Yes nothing says "profesisional" like haveing yahoo or hotmail at the end of your address