December 15, 2007...11:48 pm
Under the Radar like a Tortoise
So before I start producing diatribes regarding the failings of Thai society or the Thai government, I considered it prudent to erect several layers of anonymity to mask my activities. Although people have told me I am paranoid to think that the police will bust down my door in the middle of the night and haul me away, the fact remains that in the end, that some of the things I will say and do, which are perfectly legal in more enlightened parts of the world, are considered illegal in Thailand and are punishable with up to 20 years in prison. So with the consequences being so high, and the person subject to such penalties being my own person and not the people who say I am paranoid, I will err on the side of caution and try to remain as anonymous as possible. If people engage in questionable activities and are completely blatant about it, then it is only an eventuality they will get caught. You have to remain ever vigilant; it is when you are too lazy to safeguard yourself that you will get busted. I just hope that what I have in place will be enough.
I often hear comments along the lines of, “Why is the net in Thailand so slow?” or, “Why is latency (lag) in Thailand so high?” My theory behind this lethargic state of affairs known as the internet in Thailand is that it’s the government’s fault.
Until about two years ago, if an individual wanted to bypass the Thai censorship list, all they had to do was run a simple web proxy program that would superficially change the header where a packet of information originated from. To give a more real world (and understandable) example, imagine that you are receiving a letter from someone in the mail. Now on the letter is your name and address, as well as a return address from the sender. What a proxy server would do is change the information on the return address to read as being from someone else. All the contents inside of the letter remain unchanged, but on the outside, the letter looks to be from someone else.
The Thai government has since gotten “smarter,” however. Now, instead of looking at the headers of packets to see where they originate from, the government does a complete analysis of the packet to see if the entire contents contained within are what they appear to be. So back to the letter example, instead of merely looking at the return address of your letter, the government now opens up your mail and looks at the letter itself to see what it says. If it is blacklisted material, then it is thrown out, and instead of a letter, you receive…nothing. Now since the government has to open up and read a huge amount of letters (packets), you can imagine that a rather sizable bottleneck forms. Logically, it would be impossible for them to open up and read every single letter that passes through their hands, but I believe that they try their hardest to do so.
And this is why Thailand’s internet is so slow: The government is reading your letters.
With this in mind, it is understandable as to my wanting to keep my activities secret and private from the Thai government. I mean, if you knew someone was going to read your mail, would you be willing to send sensitive information? I think not.
If you would like to know more about how to encrypt your transmissions or how to remain anonymous or to surf through black listed sites, a good place to start is facthai.wordpress.com They will give you all the information you will need to get started. Be warned though, that they give no instructions on what to do, so I suggest you either have some decent computer knowledge, or have a friend who can provide you with assistance.
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