You have to be very careful what you say on Facebook in Thailand, lest you write something the Thai government deems transgressive and end up serving a 60 year jail sentence. Even liking or sharing a post in Thailand can land you in jail for a very, very long time, and bad language, if it pertains to the country’s military-backed draft constitution, could result in a 10 year jail sentence.

These are just a few examples of what Thailand’s military government considers a threat to national security, either concerning the country’s strict lese majeste laws, or criticizing the government. But lately what’s been called a ‘climate of fear’ in the country has been intensified when one person was arrested for content the government seemingly seized that was private correspondence in Facebook Messenger.

Two people last week were charged with sedition and insulting the monarchy in Thailand, but the evidence the government has used against them comes from a private chat on Facebook. This has led to Thailand’s netizens wondering how safe their Messenger chats are from government spies.

Why spy?

An easy explanation would be that following an arrest, officials would be able to go through messages on a telephone, although one of the persons arrested reportedly later said that police had neither taken his phone nor demanded his Facebook password. Police did, however, have screenshots of the messages he had sent to a friend that led to his arrest.

The man arrested was quoted in Thailand’s Bangkok Post as saying, “It doesn’t matter what the message is – even an invitation for a drink – they can access it. I’d like someone to ask Facebook Thailand about this and I repeat again inbox chat is no longer private.”

It’s also been said that the government simply hacked the said Facebook accounts. In 2015 Hacking Team, an Italian company which provides surveillance tools to governments, was hacked itself and Thailand was on the list of buyers.

Another scenario is that Facebook was somehow complicit in giving over the content, although this is highly unlikely given Facebook’s tight privacy policy and the fact many anti-government pages are still online. The Thai government has lately tried to persuade Facebook and other well-known chat apps to censor content.

At the moment no one really knows how the government got hold of those private messages, but Thailand’s social media users have been provoked into thinking that nothing is safe from the eyes of the zealous military junta. Section 112 of Thailand’s Criminal Code states that insults to the monarchy don’t have to be made in a public space, but can also be private.

Photo credit: Dennis Skley via Flickr