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Amnesty International called on the Thai authorities on Monday to investigate and implement effective measures to halt malicious state-sponsored smear campaigns and cyberattacks targeting civil society groups, including Amnesty International itself.
Amnesty International’s Thailand Researcher, Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, stated, “These cyberattacks are an outrageous assault on Thailand’s civic space. Thai authorities must immediately end these malicious smear campaigns against human rights defenders and activists,”
This comes after opposition parliamentarian Chayaphon Satondee revealed leaked internal documents from a Cyber Team operating under a joint police and military command, including the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), as reported by local media. The documents identified Amnesty International, other international NGOs, local civil society groups, and pro-democracy figures, including Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and iLaw, as “high-value targets.”
The cyberattack involves phishing, using fake websites, emails, or messages to deceive individuals and scam them. Scammers typically use these tactics to steal personal information. However, the military employs these methods for political purposes, such as provoking discussions around legal issues, taking screenshots to use as evidence for prosecution, or impersonating political party members to extract information. Additionally, brute force attacks are used to gain unauthorized access to a target’s computer system, phone, email, app, or social media accounts by randomly guessing passwords through trial and error.
Chayaphon further disclosed that during the fiscal year 2024, there were cyber operations targeting 85 entities, totaling 84,641 incidents. These included 44,096 phishing attempts, 10,044 reports, 26,231 brute force attacks, and 4,270 spam incidents. After September 2024, the military continued to carry out such cybercrimes weekly.
Amnesty International found that these cyber attacks represented clear violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, which are protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The targeted attempts to breach social media accounts through brute-force methods were also an infringement of the right to privacy.
This highlights the growing use of digital authoritarian practices in Thailand against dissidents. A previous joint report by iLaw and DigitalReach SEA found that Thai authorities used Pegasus spyware to hack dissidents’ mobile phones and steal their information. The report shows that 30 individuals were targeted with Pegasus between 2020 and 2021, with the majority of the victims being involved in pro-democracy protests.
Additionally, Amnesty International’s earlier research revealed the “targeted use of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV) designed to silence women and LGBTI individuals,” primarily involving digital surveillance and online harassment. This form of digital violence has instilled fear and anxiety among human rights defenders (HRDs) as they worry that private information about their lives could be weaponized against them through online abuse or used in court to prosecute them.
This pattern aligns with Meta’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report from February 2021, which revealed that 77 accounts, 72 pages, 18 groups, and 18 Instagram accounts linked to the Thai Military’s ISOC, targeting domestic audiences, were removed. This confirms the ISOC’s coordinated cyberattacks against civil society groups.
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Amnesty International’s Thailand Researcher, Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, stated, “These cyberattacks are an outrageous assault on Thailand’s civic space. Thai authorities must immediately end these malicious smear campaigns against human rights defenders and activists,”
This comes after opposition parliamentarian Chayaphon Satondee revealed leaked internal documents from a Cyber Team operating under a joint police and military command, including the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), as reported by local media. The documents identified Amnesty International, other international NGOs, local civil society groups, and pro-democracy figures, including Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and iLaw, as “high-value targets.”
The cyberattack involves phishing, using fake websites, emails, or messages to deceive individuals and scam them. Scammers typically use these tactics to steal personal information. However, the military employs these methods for political purposes, such as provoking discussions around legal issues, taking screenshots to use as evidence for prosecution, or impersonating political party members to extract information. Additionally, brute force attacks are used to gain unauthorized access to a target’s computer system, phone, email, app, or social media accounts by randomly guessing passwords through trial and error.
Chayaphon further disclosed that during the fiscal year 2024, there were cyber operations targeting 85 entities, totaling 84,641 incidents. These included 44,096 phishing attempts, 10,044 reports, 26,231 brute force attacks, and 4,270 spam incidents. After September 2024, the military continued to carry out such cybercrimes weekly.
Amnesty International found that these cyber attacks represented clear violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, which are protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The targeted attempts to breach social media accounts through brute-force methods were also an infringement of the right to privacy.
This highlights the growing use of digital authoritarian practices in Thailand against dissidents. A previous joint report by iLaw and DigitalReach SEA found that Thai authorities used Pegasus spyware to hack dissidents’ mobile phones and steal their information. The report shows that 30 individuals were targeted with Pegasus between 2020 and 2021, with the majority of the victims being involved in pro-democracy protests.
Additionally, Amnesty International’s earlier research revealed the “targeted use of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV) designed to silence women and LGBTI individuals,” primarily involving digital surveillance and online harassment. This form of digital violence has instilled fear and anxiety among human rights defenders (HRDs) as they worry that private information about their lives could be weaponized against them through online abuse or used in court to prosecute them.
This pattern aligns with Meta’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report from February 2021, which revealed that 77 accounts, 72 pages, 18 groups, and 18 Instagram accounts linked to the Thai Military’s ISOC, targeting domestic audiences, were removed. This confirms the ISOC’s coordinated cyberattacks against civil society groups.
The post Rights group calls on Thailand to end malicious smear campaigns and cyberattacks on civil society appeared first on JURIST - News.
Continue reading...
Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.