Single internet gateway clarified

[Lite Beer]

Single internet gateway clarified

BANGKOK: -- The Ministry of information and Communication Technology yesterday defended its proposed single internet gateway amid outcry by hundreds of thousands of users that it will violate rights to access to information and individual privacy.

Instead it says the gateway project was proposed to drive the Single Gateway project towards economical benefits and national security, the ICT Minister says.

ICT Minister of Uttama Savanayana said the project intends to facilitate economic expansion as providers will be able to cut their costs from common uses of the facility.

He assured that the project will not violate any privacy or rights of individuals, claiming that this arrangement will further enhance data security as the authorities will have better access to information regarding online offences.

He stressed that the government does not intend to utilize the new gateway arrangement for the political stability reasons.

He asked the public not to worry much as the project is just being studied.

The ministry will invite representatives from the business sector and the general public to further inform the details of this project, he said.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/single-internet-gateway-clarified

[GinBoy2]

Clarified = Dammit the B*stards found us out!!!!

[clockman]

What Thailand wants, and what they actually get. Are two different things.

[NCC1701A]

and no need for additional contradictions from other Thai government officials on this subject.

each sentence in this "clarification" already contains one.

Edited September 26, 2015 by NCC1701A

[Thailand]

I can just imagine what reprentatives of the business sector will be saying particularly if they are,IT,import export etc related.

[jonclark]

"He assured that the project will not violate any privacy or rights of individuals, claiming that this arrangement will further enhance data security as the authorities will have better access to information regarding online offences"

Is it just me or does anyone else see the contradiction there?

[GinBoy2]

What Thailand wants, and what they actually get. Are two different things.

Very true, but in their bungled attempts to get what they want, I fear they will hobble the already hobbled international connectivity there is.

This is a country that cant keep the power on at the first clap of thunder, trying to implement this is waaaaay more technically challenging, so disaster can only follow.

I guess with the impending deployment of Google's Project Loon, it'll give the air force a good reason to demand more surface to air missiles, shoot those darn pesky seditious internet balloons down.

Every cloud has an authoritarian regimes silver lining I guess

[Reigntax]

Doesnt matter what they do we all know it will either be broken within a month and never fixed, never worked in the first place, be the incorrect selection of equipment with the purchase based solely on commission, stolen and hocked, bypassed or converted for use in video games by the operators.

[johng]

"He assured that the project will not violate any privacy or rights of individuals, claiming that this arrangement will further enhance data security as the authorities will have better access to information regarding online offences"

Is it just me or does anyone else see the contradiction there?

There is no contradiction if we remember that " individuals " don't have any rights or privacy to violate in the first place.

[phoenixdoglover]

Dear Uttama Savanayana,

As a fellow ICT leader, I would like to offer some friendly advice.

Stay away from the cameras and the reporters. Do not try to explain what you are doing. Go back under the rock from which you emerged recently.

Love,

PDL

[NCC1701A]

can you imagine the day a single gateway system fails?

no banks, ATMs, hotels, flights, communications, stock market, currency markets, social media.

the huge economic lost to Thailand if only for one day?

50 baht to a US dollar here we come.

[GinBoy2]

can you imagine the day a single gateway system fails?

no banks, ATMs, hotels, flights, communications, stock market, currency markets, social media.

the huge economic lost to Thailand if only for one day?

50 baht to a US dollar here we come.

If you are a North Korea and the gateway fails, the question is.....there's an outside world? Hmmm, who knew

If the gateway in China fails...well the world inside the Middle Kingdom keeps on trucking

If the gateway in Thailand was to fail....watch the Toyota's and Honda's quietly make plans to exit

[worgeordie]

Lets all hope the Government does a U -turn on this,like

they do with so many other proposals they put forward,

It has nothing at all about saving money,making things

better for anyone,its all about control,so Thailand will

join the ranks of dictators,despots,and communists like

China,N.Korea,Burma,Syria,Cuba,what a club t belong to.

regards worgeordie

[EnzoRippo]

I'm happy because I loved the noise of 56 K connections. Back to the 20th century. So rejuvenating. Where is my Nokia 3610?

[JAG]

I'm happy because I loved the noise of 56 K connections. Back to the 20th century. So rejuvenating. Where is my Nokia 3610?

I've got one somewhere.

Battery life 30 minutes (if you were going downhill!

[Hawk]

The country quickly going from everyday stupidity to a state of absolute lunacy.

[Seastallion]

I can just imagine what reprentatives of the business sector will be saying particularly if they are,IT,import export etc related.

"The ministry will invite representatives from the business sector and the general public to further inform the details of this project, he said."

Yep...his brother owns a business, as does his wife and her sisters. That's the representatives of the business sector taken care of.

Hang on....they are also private citizens...so their opinion counts for that sector too.

And it didn't even cost me an expensive dinner, just a phone call.

[robblok]

Agreed, this is one of the plans I am 100% against.

In the report the guy said its for us to go after criminal activity.. so it is censorship for sure.

For sure that 1 gateway would bring the international sites to such a slowdown IPTV included that its just not watchable anymore.

[NOC]

Where will you go if the single gateway is imposed?

Edited September 26, 2015 by NOC

[smutcakes]

Can someone who is knowledgable about these IT matters explain whether this type of thing is common in most countries?

[GinBoy2]

Can someone who is knowledgable about these IT matters explain whether this type of thing is common in most countries?

It's absolutely is not.

In a small country with perhaps one internet provider maybe, but in a large country with many millions of internet users, the only, and I stress only reason to enforce a single gateway if for monitoring and intercept reasons

[Aj Mick]

Can the authorities be trusted?

[phoenixdoglover]

This map from 2013 shows the undersea cable routes in Asia.

[inutil]

I lived in China for a year and had to deal with the great firewall. As an online gamer, its a pretty big deal to have decent connections. Heres what happens:

You have hard censorship and soft censorship.

Hard censorship are sites that are blocked by the state. Theres a list on wikipedia. Even my beloved grauniad was on it now and again. This is fairly straightforward stuff. Sites the government dont want you to access are blocked.

But what you dont really understand is the soft censorship. This is where handovers are jammed, locking up traffic and making non-Chinese websites slow to a crawl. On average a speed/ping test to San Francisco would deliver around 1/20th the speed inside China. Packet traces would show constant bottlenecks in the handover. Obviously i ONLY know this because i was constantly getting irked by an apparently broken internet. Its not because i actually understand what any of this shit means. Its still gobbledygook to me, but i spent a frustrating year running traces and doing speed tests. VPNs, great as they are, still end up being throttled. At best on a 30MB connection youd be getting around 2 or 3MB in mainland Europe and much less in the pacific. These would also be dropped frequently (kicking me out of my game or just locking up my browser).

The result is cynical: If you want to do business in China on the net, you locate your website in china. This means you'll need to agree to content terms devised by the state. Its almost ingenious in a way. You dont need to regulate your citizens and stop them from reading the news from outside of China, because the sheer frustration of waiting for websites to load does al the work for you. If youre on a mobile network and your baidu is loading at your carrier speed, whilst CNN is taking an age, youre just going to read the news in the state approved webpage. Also, if youre going to search for something, you COULD use google.hk, but given youll be waiting about half a minute for the page to even load (if theyre not locking it down) you might as well use Baidu again and get a bunch of results that are censored and approved by the state. Its like an intranet in a way

Anyways, hope that explains some of the knock ons to those of you who have yet to experience its joys.

[ddavidovsky]

They're clearly intent on going ahead with this thing.

[HiSoLowSoNoSo]

And even after an outcry from hundreds of thousands of people they still defend this stupid thing.

[SoFarAndNear]

I lived in China for a year and had to deal with the great firewall. As an online gamer, its a pretty big deal to have decent connections. Heres what happens:

You have hard censorship and soft censorship.

Hard censorship are sites that are blocked by the state. Theres a list on wikipedia. Even my beloved grauniad was on it now and again. This is fairly straightforward stuff. Sites the government dont want you to access are blocked.

But what you dont really understand is the soft censorship. This is where handovers are jammed, locking up traffic and making non-Chinese websites slow to a crawl. On average a speed/ping test to San Francisco would deliver around 1/20th the speed inside China. Packet traces would show constant bottlenecks in the handover. Obviously i ONLY know this because i was constantly getting irked by an apparently broken internet. Its not because i actually understand what any of this shit means. Its still gobbledygook to me, but i spent a frustrating year running traces and doing speed tests. VPNs, great as they are, still end up being throttled. At best on a 30MB connection youd be getting around 2 or 3MB in mainland Europe and much less in the pacific. These would also be dropped frequently (kicking me out of my game or just locking up my browser).

The result is cynical: If you want to do business in China on the net, you locate your website in china. This means you'll need to agree to content terms devised by the state. Its almost ingenious in a way. You dont need to regulate your citizens and stop them from reading the news from outside of China, because the sheer frustration of waiting for websites to load does al the work for you. If youre on a mobile network and your baidu is loading at your carrier speed, whilst CNN is taking an age, youre just going to read the news in the state approved webpage. Also, if youre going to search for something, you COULD use google.hk, but given youll be waiting about half a minute for the page to even load (if theyre not locking it down) you might as well use Baidu again and get a bunch of results that are censored and approved by the state. Its like an intranet in a way

Anyways, hope that explains some of the knock ons to those of you who have yet to experience its joys.

This is why china is only a very small market for international hosting... you even need allowance to run a Webserver on Port 80.

[JAG]

Doesnt matter what they do we all know it will either be broken within a month and never fixed, never worked in the first place, be the incorrect selection of equipment with the purchase based solely on commission, stolen and hocked, bypassed or converted for use in video games by the operators.

can you imagine the day a single gateway system fails?

no banks, ATMs, hotels, flights, communications, stock market, currency markets, social media.

the huge economic lost to Thailand if only for one day?

50 baht to a US dollar here we come.

They're clearly intent on going ahead with this thing.

If they do go ahead, and as "Reigntax" points out it fails they will have to go back very quickly.

Otherwise as "NCC1701A" points out Thailand will be teetering on an economic abyss.

A lot of damage will be done. It will take years, if ever for Thailand to recover. I should imagine that International business is very much aware of this, and even now a large number of investment decisions are being frozen or possibly even reversed. When (if) that becomes understood, and the"born to rule" wake up to the implications to them, loss of money and face; then stand by for some more "clarification".

Edited September 26, 2015 by JAG

[dageurreotype]

Where will you go if the single gateway is imposed?

Where I was before I found the net I suppose. Reading actual books, painting, long walks ..

[JAG]

Where will you go if the single gateway is imposed?

That 9mm scale model of a 1960s west country branch line railway terminus, which has been stored in boxes for ages, might get built.

Note to self, start getting Best Beloved on side with the idea!