9/18/2019 Case | Freedom of Expression Documentation Center | น อ ลกฎหมายและค เส ภาพ   7. Organizing meetings and public speeches   Reference   Chiranuch further testified that Prachatai is a project under the Foundation for Community Educational Media which mainly aims to present truthful news, promote exchange of ideas, and democratization. It can be divided into two main sections including;     1. News and articles under the charge of the editorial team   2. Webboard, an open space for people to debate and exchange     The editorial team is composed of around ten members, and only one webboard administrator, Chiranuch herself.     News featured covers a range of issues including labour, society, the environment, economy, politics, etc.     Monitoring of contents in the two sections is done differently. The news and article section, an emphasis is placed on editing the text to make it readable. As for the webboard section, any reader could post anything and it would be shown on the web pages instantly. There was initially no screening from the webmaster. Such an approach was widely adopted in webboards and it aimed to encourage spontaneous and lively exchange.     Regarding supervision, Chiranuch explained that in the beginning, there were not many users in her webboard, and the posters were informally asked to express their views creatively and the situation had been fine. Initially, the posters exchanged their views very richly and listened to each other.     As for guidelines, they were laid down in general including;   1. No trampling down on differing views   2. Degrading comments not encouraged   3. No offensive or rude comments   4. Complicity with the law     Chiranuch stated that a turning point occurred at around the 19 September 2006 coup, which saw a sharp rise of webboard users in more than tenfold. The highly charged debate reflected well the tense political atmosphere during the time and controversial events including dissolutions of political party, the drafting of the new Constitution, etc. The debate has thus become very animated. Regarding the posting of lèse-majesté comments, after consultations with the Foundation’s Board of Directors, measures have been put in place including;     1. Now, every poster was required to get registered prior to being allowed to post any comment   2. The postings were subject to screening by Prachatai staff, and if any inappropriate posts are found, they shall be removed immediately.     More measures have been installed later including drawing on voluntary help from its members to remove any inappropriate posts. The volunteers included users from all walks o life including lawyers, medical doctors, business persons, academics, etc. and they were allowed to remove any comments directly.     Chiranuch stated that the page view in 2007-2008 was around 20,000-30,000 per day, and everyday, there were around 300 new topics posted with about 2,800-2,900 comments altogether.     As per Exhibit J23, the topic ID numbers were generated in order and each topic was generated with an ID no. based on the order of time the comments were posted. The topics were listed in order based on the most updated comments of each of the topic, not based on the sequence of the ID numbers.     The ID no. as appeared in the plaint (Exhibit J32) is 1193245 meaning there were more than 1 million postings just for the topic.     Chiranuch further testified that MICT officers including Mr. Aree, called to ask her to remove comments. Emails have also been sent from MICT, particularly after the consultation t set out guidelines of operation. During the meeting, it was discussed as to ways to manage websites and further mutual cooperation, and it was agreed initially that coordination could be done either via phone or email. Then, she started to receive emails containing many URLs, apart from those belonging to Prachatai. For a time, such an email had been sent to her almost everyday.     Upon receiving the emails, she would check if the URLs belonged to Prachatai, if so, she would access the posts and remove them immediately. After that, the banned URLs shal be added to a blacklist of Prachatai website making it impossible for them to reappear in Prachatai web pages.     Chiranuch further stated that she had submitted the URLs to Prachatai’s technical staff to review and find that of 3,000 URLs received from the MICT officers, 25 belonged to Prachatai, and several posts based on the URLs had been removed prior to receiving the notifications from the authority.     She was called to stand as a witness in the case against Ms. Nopphawan, and then was shown by the inquiry officer Exhibits J23-31, Pol. Lt. Col. Yutthapong Thawinwiboon, was an inquiry officer in charge of the case and the testimony was given in March 2009. During that time, she was not informed that any charges were being mulled against her. During the inquiry, she was not at all informed that charges were pressed against her. She got to see the URLs from the webboard and found they belonged to Prachatai. Nevertheless, those URLs were outdated, and it was impossible to cross check from existing database in order to identify IP addresses of the posters.   Chiranuch stated that on 3 November 2008, she received an envelope. After opening the envelope she found a paper indicating ID no. of the poster as per Exhibit J32. Immediately, she had access to the post blocked.     In the testimony prepared by Lt. Col. Boonlert Kalayanamitra, she signed as a witness and in it, no indication was made as to who the alleged offender was in the case. Later, she learned that the case against Ms. Nopphawan was dismissed since it was not possible to verify if Ms. Nopphawan was the real poster.     Chiranuch further testified that on 6 March 2009, she was arrested on just one count stemming from the post by “bento”, and by then, she was already aware that “bento” was Ms Nopphawan. Both arrest and search warrants were established during the raid at her office. Her notebook computer was seized by the offices as evidence and later the MICT officers have conducted the copying of the data invoking the court order.     https://freedom.ilaw.or.th/en/case/112#circumstance_of_arrest 19/26