MrPavee

For those who doesn’t know what DTAC is, it’s Thailand’s second largest mobile phone operator/telco (the likes of Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular, etc). I was searching the web for a new (cheap) package to put my phone on now that I’m going to be away from Thailand for 2 months in the UK. I waited for about 40 seconds in the queue.

Take a look at the screenshot and you’ll know for yourself (click for larger):

I went “what the hell” when I saw the window open up, and quickly press “denied” so that my webcam wouldn’t be broadcasting my face too! For erm, my own reasons, I’ve blacked out my full name and phone number, but I don’t mind you knowing what promotion I’m on !

She was also trained to wave goodbuy once I was done asking my questions !

Though quite a nice gimmick, I doubt it’s very good use of call center (centre, sorry) resource. Nice for me changing promotions in the UK though, saves long distance talks.

PS Note the ever increasing use of the Telenor logo. I bet DTAC will be Telenor Thailand in the next year or so.

I’m flying back to the UK in a week’s time and I’ve got too many remaining things to do. I have got to finish an outstanding yearbook, a website for a client, a system for submitting papers for an upcoming academic conference, organise the timings for our stall at the freshers fair, sort out our freshers squash, sort out my options for next year and finally sign up for CSLoxinfo 4Mbps/512kbps ADSL instead of CAT 2/2Mbps g.shdsl (is it any good?).

What a hectic week coming. This was like a summer holiday I totally did nothing.

PS I’m considering no longer flying with Etihad or Emerates, on the sole reason that they jailed someone for 4 years for having poppy seeds stuck to his shirt. (Poppy seeds are an important ingredient in many types of food worldwide, even my favourite Subway Sweet Onion Sauce, but is illegal is the UAE).

I’m a HiNet by CAT user, on the Premium 2/2Mbps g.shdsl package. I noticed something wrong when I tried sending out an email on my university account today. The error came back through Outlook while connecting to the outgoing mail server (SMTP) with “The encryption type you selected is not supported by the server”. This surprised me, so being as geeky as I am, I looked into it.

It turned out that at first sight, my university’s outgoing mail server stopped supporting encryption. But looking deeper into it, there seemed to be an SMTP proxy in between the real server and me. This happened to every single server that I looked at, if I made an outgoing connection through port 25, I would connect to this same server with the same welcome message.

To note: it is about 1.30am in Thailand.

Let’s try the Gmail outgoing mail server, smtp.gmail.com:

> telnet smtp.gmail.com 25

220 [209.85.143.109] ESMTP Smtpd; Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:33:15 +0700

…

Note here that, smtp.gmail.com resolves to 209.85.143.109 which is not a local Thai IP, but somehow it has a Thai timestamp, with a GMT+7 timezone (oh, coincidence I’m sure).

So I’m going to put this in non-technical words for you: what this clearly shows is that CAT is putting a fake system in between me and the real system (the fake system would pretend to be the real system). The fake system does not support encryption (the scrambling of data sent so that no one can intercept the data, except the sender and the receiver systems). I think this was done in the hope that people will make unencrypted attempts to logon and so the government can log your usernames and passwords and log all emails you send in and out.

I have routed my emails through my secondary True ADSL connection for now since that still supports encryption with the right certificate. I will be setting up an encrypted VPN channel between here and my system in the UK soon and route all emails traffic through that.

What the government has clearly shown here is that they’re willing to go every step in invade the privacy and basic human rights of the people of this country. This should be heavily frowned upon and heavily condemed.

This country is heading for a serious downfall, and if this government doesn’t get out now, it may well be too late.

PS Did you know this country also has an ISP and Corporate Level internet data 90-days retention policy. What this means is, they force all internet service providers and companies providing internet to their staff to log all the traffic that flows in and out for at least 90 days (or face 500,000 baht fine). This is ridiculous both in the sense that it clearly invades the privacy of users, and in technical terms because this system will be very costly in practise.

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Edit 2: SMTP connections through CAT no longer seems to be going through this fake server.

The second day has passed now since the Prime Minister has officially declared a state of emergency which restricts many rights of the public and the media such as no gathering of more than five people and no media which may create fear in the general public. The order could potentially extend to a curfew but probably will not, since that would cause public fear in itself and has no real justification.

The state of emergency was declared because the anti-government protesters (PAD) has clashed with the pro-government protesters (DAAD/Nor Por Kor/Nor Por Chor/etc). Many people, including myself and many academics, see this as the prime minister taking an opportunity to seize (even more) power. Many people also speculated that the pro-government protesters were actually hired. The person who died when the two sides clashed was a pro-government protester who was an alcohol addict with no real job, citing Kom Chud Luek which interviewed a distant relative and home owner whose address was on the guy’s ID card. It stated that the guy does not really live at the address but his name was in the official registration because he has nowhere else to live. Moreover, it stated that the guy turns up a few times a year to ask for money because he has no real job, sometimes dressed as a monk, other times not. Someone like that would probably not have a strong political opinion and would be very much attracted to the occasional 500 baht ‘job’ in joining the pro-government protest. No relatives has yet to pick up his body.

Apart from the free newspaper I picked up today with an editorial note on the front saying the editors do not agree with the declaration of the ’state of emergency’, the atmosphere in Bangkok is not any different in the last two days than any other days. This is the first time Thailand has become under a ’state of emergency’ and it has become a state of laughing stock if nothing else. From the atmosphere on the streets, the orders of the prime minister under the ’state of emergency’ is virtually a joke since noone is following them anyway. If anything, the ’state of emergency’ has attracted more people to join the protests which are already in the thousands, if not more.

I have broken the law myself today when I met up with more than five people at the same time. A school hosted a Model United Nations (MUN) session, obviously a political gathering, involving tens of people must have also broken the law. I haven’t noticed less people in Starbucks today either. Oh, and the normal rush hour traffic jam in Bangkok is still just as bad as it was weeks ago (or now even worse since the government has introduced its populist fuel tax cuts).

So, what is the emergency here Mr Samak?

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- PS The Foreign Minister, Tej Bunnaag, has resigned after being in work for just over a month (more pressure for Samak to resign)
- PS2 There are speculations that Samak is airing his resignation tomorrow at 7.30am. He has asked for time on Radio Thailand but not any of the television channels (which is odd because he normally announces everything through NBT).

Yeah I just woke up, this real-life real-time drama on TV kept me awake the whole day from 5am to 5pm. I’m a big fan of 24 (the series), and this was just like that, and the only difference was that this was not in HD (high-definition) on Fox. Yeah, there were commercial breaks and people who appeared to cannot have been touched by the law (at least for now) were there, just like Jack Bauer.

The following events began happening at 5am.

The day started off with what appeared to have been armed protesters storming the NBT television. NBT is a government-owned television station viewed by many as nothing but a (serious) voice box for the current government, i.e. PTV funded with tax payers money. The local television appeared to show the police detaining the people who broke into the station just after 5am. The group of around 80 appeared to be armed with golf clubs, a few guns, a few knives and some drugs.

But if someone was going to be breaking into a compound to try and take it over, why would they bring drugs? And for the drugs they had, a few bottles of red bull would have done the same job anyway? So I think they may have been additionally staged by the Royal Thai Police (who are famous for doing things like that). Surely, they don’t represent the PAD protesters who are mostly middle-class 45+ years old? (See this). The NBT reporters at first appeared to be shaken as the struggle between the protesters for the control of the station began. After they felt they were safely broadcasting from an ‘undisclosed location’, the news readers appeared to be critical of the protesters again.

The rest of the day was then filled with those 45+ years old storming different key locations in Bangkok and are finally now camping in the gardens of the government house(!). Now, this is funny. Imagine protesters climbing over the fence into the white house to protest, because effectively, that’s what the government house is. I can’t see that happening with George Bush coming out to foreign media and saying “please, have sympathy for me, you see what I’m going through?”

The events yesterday showed many things. To the pro-Thaksin supporters, this was yet another attempt to bring down a government who are attempting to save their beloved Thaksin who is being trialed for unfairly (in their view). To the pro-democracy advocates and the west, this was yet another attempt to bring down an elected government by the more right-wing protesters not through democratic means, being pick-and-choose with democracy. To PAD, this was a major attempt (they call it whistle blow) to bring down the incompetent Samak government after 90ish days of constant protesting (and making their voice more heard). To the rest of the country, it’s another day in the deeply divided country.

To me, this showed that the government is really losing its grip and control and is actually really weak. What will happen now is quite unpredictable as Samak is known for his hot-tempered knee-jerk reactions, though the government keeping their patience so far is an odd but commendable act on their behalf.

Maybe Samak has been taking anger management lessons?

EDIT 1: Riot police have been geared up since 3am according to Matichon, some blood has been shed it says.