If events over the past two weeks do not convince the government to write an actual law covering computer fraud, maybe nothing will. The first unfortunate event was to threaten a Chiang Mai magazine editor with a computer crime charge over something that had nothing to do with computers (or crime, come to that). The second was the reluctant admission by the country's second mobile phone company of security misbehaviour, putting tens of thousands of customers at risk. That is not a crime.
The easy case for almost everyone concerns Pim Kemasingki. She oversees CityLife Chiang Mai, an informative, English language journal about her hometown. Quite properly, the magazine has been at the journalistic centre of the Rose City's problem of air pollution. Late last month, an editorial on the problem featured an imaginative cartoon drawn by a Chiang Mai student -- three kings of the Lanna Kingdom wearing pollution masks.
Almost all readers, and now the general public, thought the young man's cartoon met traditional journalistic standards: biting sarcasm with a ration of humour. Not so Pavin Chamniprasart. The Chiang Mai governor's sense of humour had been tested previously. In 2016, for example, he carried out a threat to detain and try to prosecute men who took off their shirts and "went topless" at Songkran.
