Anti-censorship website got blocked by Thai university and ISPs

Reports from Thai netizens to Thai Netizen Network's mailing list showing yet another attempt from Thai authorities to shut down any media that's not on their side. Unsurprisingly (and that's sad to say so), the time comes to Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT). Two commercial ISPs and one university have been reported that they blocked the anti-censorship blog.

It was found on Saturday 2009.04.25. Users who using Internet service of TOT, Buddy Broadband or Kasetsart University will not be able to access http://facthai.wordpress.com/.

Ministry of ICT recently admits they blocked nearly 9,000 urls, of which 6,200 are concerned as a treat to national security. Thai Netizen Network website reports the 66 Red-Shirt/Red-Shirted urls that MICT sent to every ISPs and major websites, urging them to entirely blocked the urls. Noted that this list does not included FACT's url, but it got blocked anyway. With enough ignorance, the MICT block list also includes http://ning.com/ (a social network service), http://www.cbox.ws/ (a chat box service), and http://www.no-ip.org/ (a dynamic DNS service) — common services used by many Thai netizens and bloggers, orange or pink, watching AF TV or not.

The authorities probably expected that every Thai should sacrifices not just their rights and freedom, but also conveniences in everyday life in this time of Media War.

Fortunate enough, some ISPs can think by and for themselves (+their customers). While blocking almost every other urls in the MICT list, they don't touch ning.com and no-ip.org. OK, stupid enough, CSLoxinfo still blocked mashable.com, a (Red-Shirt, huh?) IT news site.

I see necessity in this very situation to repeat it over that: Government's Security IS NOT EQUAL TO National Security.

ความมั่นคงของรัฐบาล ไม่เท่ากับ ความมั่นคงของรัฐ

Summary report on http://facthai.wordpress.com/ blockage:
Can't access (BAD) from (at least) 3 ISPs: TOT, Buddy Broadband, Kasetsart University [source]

• TOT - BAD (2009.04.25 13:07)
• Maxnet - OK (2009.04.25 13:48)
• Kasetsart - BAD (2009.04.25 14:32)
• CAT HiNet - OK (2009.04.25 16:04)
• Comcast (US) - OK (2009.04.25 16:36)
• TOT - BAD (2009.04.25 17:15)
• TOT - BAD (2009.04.25 17:33)
• True - OK (2009.04.25 17:40)
• TOT - BAD (2009.04.25 21:49)
• True - OK (2009.04.25 23:14)
• Buddy - BAD (2009.04.26 02:16)
• CSLoxinfo - OK (2009.04.26 11:26)

technorati tags: Internet censorship, Freedom Against Censorship Thailand, Thailand