As opposition mounts over a proposal to study the advantages and disadvantages of a so-called national single internet gateway, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha yesterday insisted he has not instructed any agency to move forward with the project.
"Nothing has been done yet. It is only a discussion among concerned state agencies about security and the implementation of the digital economy, covering trade and investment and information distribution," he said.
"The single gateway was raised as only one of several options," the prime minister said.
The prime minister said the government is very concerned about the human rights aspect of a single gateway and the public should not panic.
The topic is something every country has to study, he said, adding that implementation of the proposal depends on a number of factors including lessons learnt from other countries which use a single gateway.
It is the cabinet's responsibility to decide on the proposal, taking into consideration public opinion as well, he said.
Gen Prayut was speaking after documents claiming to have been issued by the Secretariat of the Cabinet on Aug 27 to ministers and state agencies informing them of the prime minister's instructions were spread online.
Among the instructions was a cabinet resolution on Aug 4 telling agencies to make important projects this year, including a "single gateway" project which is the responsibility of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry.
The issue sparked outrage online and netizens launched a campaign on Wednesday night to hack and force offline at least half a dozen government websites, including the ICT Ministry.
Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon said yesterday he does not expect a single gateway to be launched under the current government and he does not want the idea to spark conflicts.
Gen Thawip Netniyom, secretary-general of the National Security Council, said Gen Prawit had instructed all agencies concerned to step up their efforts to improve public understanding about why a study was needed on a single gateway proposal.
CAT Telecom acting president Col Sappachai Huwanant, meanwhile, ruled out the possibility of physically merging all existing international internet gateways (IIGs) into one.
CAT Telecom itself already has six IIGs, which are all underwater fibre-optic cables, while there are more IIGs owned by 10 other IIG service providers, he said.
Col Sappachai, however, emphasised the importance of improving data security on the internet.
He described the current internet security situation in Thailand as a "paradise" for hackers who exploit the country as a base to launch attacks on other countries.
The government needs a specific law to allow them to legally monitor information on the internet, he said.
Singapore and Malaysia, for instance, have a law to allow the government to filter and intercept suspicious online activity, according to Col Sappachai.
Despite the large number of IIG service providers in Thailand, the prices of services remain relatively higher than other countries such as Singapore, which is why international content providers choose not to invest in Thailand, he said.
Each underwater IIG cable requires at least one billion baht in investment for private service providers, while the returns for the IIG infrastructure are still ridiculously low, he said.
The private IIG service providers can cut costs by switching to renting CAT Telecom's IIGs, he said.
In another development, an online group campaigning against the single gateway with a Facebook page called "Single Gateway: Thailand Internet Firewall" posted a statement on Facebook saying it had halted the hacking which they called "F5" at midnight on Thursday.
"Over the past two days, all activities the group carried out came as warning messages [a whisper from members of the public] to the Royal Thai Government over the single gateway matter. This clearly shows discontent among hundreds of thousands of people who took part in these activities over the government's single gateway policy," said a statement on the group's Facebook page.
The group announced on Facebook that it planned to issue a new statement regarding their protest against the single gateway proposal last night at 11.30pm after it had evaluated the government's reaction to their protest.
"If the government intends on moving towards the building of a North Korean state in this country which will have a major effect on future generations, we will have to step up our activities to urge more members of the public to join hands in this effort to make our whisper heard louder that we, the Thai people, don't want a single gateway," said the group on its Facebook page.