#Thailand - Soldiers and bomb squads to patrol #Bangkok during #APEC

Authorities are now finalizing security measures and protocols for next week’s APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.
The police chief has indicated around 30,000 police officers backed by soldiers will be deployed around Bangkok on the meeting days.

Explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) police have carried out a major bomb response demonstration at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, the venue for the leaders’ meeting.

A demonstration of searches for suspicious objects at the main venue for the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting was carried out. Police canines and remote-controlled explosive ordinance response robots were used in the demonstration.

The robots are able to capture x-ray images of suspicious objects so the operator may determine whether an object is indeed an explosive ordinance.

Upon confirmation of an explosive ordinance, the robot can move the object into a collection vehicle that will then move the object to a safe area for disposal.

Anti-drone vehicles equipped with radar will secure the meeting venue against aerial drones. Radio jammers will activate when a drone threat is detected by radar.

Rapid response units will track down the drone controller and seize the drone in question. The controller will be prosecuted in accordance with the law.

Royal Thai Police Commissioner Damrongsak Kittipraphat indicated the police have full confidence over more than 80% of security measures for the APEC leaders’ meeting. He explained that confidence will reach 100% upon adjustments and additional drills and this will be accomplished before the meeting day.

The police will deploy almost 30,000 personnel in Bangkok who will be supported by some 2,000 soldiers. In addition to providing security, the police will be facilitating traffic around Bangkok during the APEC leaders’ week.

The police chief said vantage points around the meeting venue will be monitored by security officials, including those in plainclothes. Rigorous security will also be provided at the residences and travel routes that will be used by APEC leaders.

Pol. Gen. Damrongsak said the movements of various groups, including those which may perpetrate violence, are being closely monitored. However, no movements of concern have been detected.

Lessons learned from the unrest in 2019 have also been applied to security measures for next week’s meeting.

The police chief asked that the public avoid areas around the meeting venue if they can, as regular traffic may be impacted next week

Source - Bangkok Jack

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Cybercrime surges above $120-bn in Southeast Asia

Authorities must cooperate internationally, regulate at home, to stem online crime spree.

THE RAPID growth of Bitcoin-related scams and other cybercrimes has prompted the United Nations to urge member countries, including Thailand, to step up their legal safeguards against potential economic losses.

Cybercrime-related losses worldwide top US$600 billion (Bt19.6 trillion), said Julien Garsany, deputy regional representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Garsany told a Bangkok seminar on cryptocurrency and cyber-crime that the cost of economic and other damage to Asian countries alone ranges between $120 million and $200 million, making it essential for law-enforcement and justice officials in various countries to work together to tackle the issue.

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Thailand has also won support from the international community after an executive decree was issued recently to regulate all digital assets, including Bitcoin and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Kittipong Kittayarak, executive director of the Thailand Institute of Justice, said criminals have now turned to using cryptocurrencies to commit crimes such as money laundering, terrorism financing and illicit ransom payments. They also use cryptocurrencies to pay for child pornography, malware, narcotics, weapons and human trafficking via the so-called “darknet”, whose computer server locations are unknown.

The number of cryptocurrency crimes in Thailand remains small so far but is expected to increase rapidly in the near future. The country needs to boost public awareness and readiness to tackle this issue, Kittipong said.

Justice Minister ACM Prajin Chantong told the seminar that a shortage of experts in this field means Thailand needs to expand its collaboration with other countries.

Dr Narin Phetthong, an Interpol specialist on criminal activity involving cryptocurrencies, said the most prominent cases in Thailand included a huge Bitcoin robbery in Phuket allegedly carried out by Russian criminals and the Bt800-million Bitcoin scam in which a Finnish owner of bitcoins was allegedly cheated by Thais.

Alexandru Caciuloiu, the UNODC’s cybercrime project coordinator, said criminal activity involving cryptocurrency could take many forms, including their use by prostitution rings to launder money and crypto-hacking in which computer servers are accessed without authorisation to mine Bitcoins and other digital units.

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 Regional operation

Narin said Interpol now has a regional operation in Singapore with a unit dedicated to cybercrimes in Asean countries. Owing to concerns on the expected rise of these crimes, Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now tasked with regulating all digital assets in the country.

Bhume Bhumiratana, a consultant of SEC, said licensing and registration with the authorities is now required for several types of business involving digital assets, including cryptocurrency exchanges, dealers and brokers. Such regulator oversight could help prevent fraud and other wrongdoing, Bhume added.

Preventive measures such as licensing and “know your customer” (KYC) regulations imposed on banks and other financial institutions will allow the authorities to trace owners of digital assets used in criminal activities.

Poramin Insom, founder of the Zcoin and TDAX cryptocurrency exchanges in Thailand, said only 0.2 per cent of the Thai population currently use Bitcoins and similar currencies. He predicts that figure will grow 10 per cent over the next five years.

Poramin said the current regulations on all digital assets are good for the country and potential users, as well as investors who want to know the rules to avoid problems with regulators.

 However, authorities must avoid over-regulating digital assets and other new technologies as Thai innovators could be negatively affected, cautioned Prin Panitchpakdi, a member of SET’s board of governors and director of National Innovation Agency. 

Source - TheNation

 

#Thailand - Police set up team to hunt Yingluck after ‘easy’ escape.

Interpol to assist as anti-corruption activist accuses authorities of negligence.

AMID a flurry of blame, accusations and speculation, authorities remain unable to explain how former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra was so easily able to escape justice.

Anti-corruption activist Srisuwan Junya yesterday lodged a petition with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, asking it to investigate the failure of top security officers to prevent Yingluck from fleeing the country.

 Srisuwan focused on Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, who oversees security matters, and police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda, accusing them of being negligent in their duties. 

Prawit, who is also Defence Minister, said the activist has the right to do so, but reiterated that the authorities had no way to prevent Yingluck from fleeing the country.

“How could the authorities know when and where she would flee? Who would know it?” Prawit said at the Defence Ministry, in response to a reporter who pointed out that the authorities had closely monitored Yingluck’s movements even when she went to temples to make merit. The former premier had always complained that security officials and spies followed her everywhere.

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 “Yingluck’s escape was unexpected because she earlier always insisted that she would not flee. And there were police in front of her house all the time,” Prawit said. 

The authorities still have no official explanation as to how Yingluck failed to show up at the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions last Friday. Her whereabouts since have been the subject of intense speculation by the media, activists and observers. 

The court has postponed the verdict delivery to late next month, and has issued an arrest warrant, but nobody has a clear answer as to whether she will return to Thailand. 

Police have set up a team to track her, and the relevant agencies have been closely following movements around border areas, including natural land borders. Officers had been instructed to report the results of the operation every five days, deputy national police chief Pol General Srivara Ransibrahmanakul said.

Police in Lat Phrao have been instructed to check all the surveillance cameras around Yingluck’s house as well as her other residences in Bangkok and her hometown of Chiang Mai, but they have failed to find her, Srivara said.

Speculation denied

According to Srivara, Yingluck was last seen in her Bangkok home at 2pm on Wednesday. Officers from Lat Phrao Police Station, who were responsible for supervising Yingluck’s residence, said other people in the house had confirmed that she no longer lived there. 

Royal Thai Police will now seek the cooperation of Interpol to alert police forces in 190 countries around the world about Yingluck’s current legal status. 

Media citing unnamed sources reported that she had fled via Cambodia and Singapore to Dubai to join her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has a home there. The government in Phnom Penh dismissed the report, and authorities in Dubai also said they know nothing about Yingluck’s whereabouts.

Pol Maj-General Apichart Suriboonya, head of the police foreign affairs division, said the police had contacted officials in Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates but had received no information. 

Apichart told reporters about normal procedures, saying that Interpol could take “quite some time”. If any member of Interpol located Yingluck, Thai police could seek an international arrest warrant to have her apprehended. However, it would be up to Interpol how the case was conducted. 

Like everybody else, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha yesterday denied speculation that the National Council for Peace and Order deliberately let Yingluck slip out of the country, saying it was beyond his expectation that she would flee.

“I didn’t think it would happen. In the morning [of the verdict], I still thought that she would go to court, following the procedure. I respected her,” Prayut said. 

Bombarded with questions about the incident, Prayut said furiously: “Who would let her flee? How come, why did you think like this?”

Prayut said he had instructed security officers to find out how the former premier left the country. They would also look at flaws in the process in order to prevent it happening again.

Prayut, who is also the head of the junta, said it was difficult for the authorities to follow Yingluck |before the court had made its judgment because they respected her privacy. 

Officers had been criticised over their possible violation of human rights, Prayut noted, adding that that had made everything difficult.

Prayut said he didn’t want people to blame the security officers, saying that the media should tone down its criticism. It would be “insane” if officers intentionally let her flee, he said.

Source - TheNation

 

High alert over global cyber-attacks

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AUTHORITIES are on high alert following a global spread of malicious software in a massive wave of cyber-attacks affecting about 100 countries including Thailand.

The government yesterday warned computer users to beware of this dangerous malware. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has instructed the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society to closely monitor the situation here and issue guidelines necessary to the public to curb negative impacts, Government spokesman Lt-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said yesterday.

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Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, said yesterday the cyber-attacks were causing havoc across the globe “at an unprecedented level”, AFP reported. The attacks would “require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits”, said the agency, which is working with countries and companies affected. 

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Some unidentified computers in Thailand were attacked by the WannaCry ransomware that has caused the attacks but critical sectors of healthcare, telecommunications and finance have not been affected, the Thailand Computer Emergency Response Team (ThaiCERT) said yesterday.

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 Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

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“In Thailand, we found that some computers were affected by the malware. But the infection has not been widespread,” ThaiCERT said in a statement. However, it did not have details regarding particular computers, IP addresses or organisations affected, a source familiar with the matter told The Nation yesterday.

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The source said he saw a diagram that shows Thailand is among the countries targeted. 

After learning about the attack, ThaiCERT alerted leading public hospitals but so far, no hospitals in Thailand have been hit by the ransomware attack, the source said. Financial services and banks, as well as the telecommunications sector, did not appear to have been affected.

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“We had a meeting with hospitals on Saturday morning. The healthcare sector has not been affected,” the source said.

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Local mobile operator, Total Access Communication Plc (Dtac) told The Nation the firm’s telecommunication network had not been attacked by WannaCry.

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Kasikornbank said its system security team has measures to protect and closely monitor the bank’s computer systems.

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Meanwhile, Vice Minister for Digital Economy and Society Pansak Siriruchatapong said critical infrastructure organisations – hospitals and financial institutions included – must have action plans to take care of their information.

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As many as 90 per cent of computers affected by ransomware would not recover, according to the source. He said organisations could protect themselves from ransomware by updating information in an external hard disk, avoid opening attached files in emails sent from unknown senders or clicking suspicious links. They should also keep their operating system and other software updated, the source advised. 

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Organisations could help protect users from ransomware with a system to filter emails. Currently, most organisations in Thailand are aware of the risk of cyber-attacks, he added. 

“The challenge is how to deal with the risk. To deal with the cyber-attack, organisations should be reactive, have a computer emergency response team or CERT team, and proactive action plans,” he said.

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He suggested that financial, telecom, and healthcare sectors should have their own CERT – Computer Emergency Response Team.

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ThaiCERT is closely working with financial institutions, including the three main regulators of the financial, stock, and insurance sectors.

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Currently, 200 of the 283 state organisations use ThaiCERT’s security services. The Office of the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Public Health and King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, were examples.

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Source - TheNation

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