E-War Room launched to protect Thailand's clean candidates, political parties

BANGKOK, February 26 (TNA) - The Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) has launched its E-War Room service to monitor slanderous messages illegally posted against clean electoral candidates and political parties on social media platforms in order to have them deleted from the online systems. EC Deputy Secretary-General Sawang Boonmee told journalists on Tuesday of the updated move based on Thailand's electoral law. "For the newly-launched E-War Room center, there is a group of EC staff members who are assigned to monitor slanderous written messages, covering video clips and images, posted on social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, that are against clean electoral candidates and political parties and against Thailand's electoral law so that the administration service of the social media networks will be then notified to have the defamed communications deleted from their online platforms", the EC deputy secretary-general explained. According to the EC deputy secretary-general, the E-War Room center is under the supervision of the ECT's investigation unit tasked with monitoring all forms of communications posted on the social media platforms and submitting the illegal ones to an EC panel in charge of looking into the materials and notifying the administration unit of the social media networks to have the materials deleted from their online systems if they are verified unlawful electoral campaigns. The EC deputy secretary-general said more than 40 illegal online communications have been notified to the administration unit of the social media systems to have them deleted from their platforms. The EC deputy secretary-general conceded that it has been, however, difficult to track down offending roots of the cases and the deletion of the illegal communications needs to take some times. (TNA)