Word: thailander
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...head of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime during the 1970s, has not been seen in public for about 10 years. Last week, however, the Asian Wall Street Journal reported that he was lurking in the background when Cambodian peace talks were held in Thailand in June. While negotiations with the Vietnam-backed government of Hun Sen were under way, the ex-dictator reportedly instructed the guerrillas from a secret location nearby. He is said to have acceded to government demands to designate Phnom Penh as the seat of the four-party Supreme National Council, consisting of the Khmer Rouge...
...this country are fed by reports of sightings of Americans in Asian jungles, often from refugees or anti-communist guerrilla bands seeking money and publicity from the U.S. The production of faked pictures, forged letters, dog tags, even bones has become a cottage industry in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Veterans' groups and families of missing servicemen have offered large rewards for information, but none of the thousands of reported sightings and pictures has ever turned up a surviving American prisoner...
...newcomer to the world of computers, the government of Thailand was surprised and flattered last summer when it won a prize for being a "hero of the information age" from the Smithsonian Institution and Computerworld magazine. The award, which focused world attention on the Interior Ministry's efforts to computerize the country's social services, proved to be a mixed blessing. Technocrats may admire systems like Bangkok's, which by 2006 will have stored vital data on 65 million Thais in a single, integrated computer network. But civil libertarians are appalled. Simon Davies, an Australian expert on such technology...
...Thailand's population data-base system -- the largest of its kind -- has become a symbol for an alarming trend. Even as Western nations place new limits on what they permit computers to do with sensitive personal data, some of their biggest computer firms have begun selling to Third World governments systems that are far more invasive than any permitted back home. In some cases, though not necessarily Thailand's, computers with vast potential for misuse are being sold to governments with long histories of human-rights violations...
...basic principle is laid out in the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, which at least in theory restricts the government from taking computer data gathered for one purpose (say, the census) and using them for another purpose (say, tax collection). Another guiding precept is that unique numerical identifiers -- like Thailand's ID numbers -- should be avoided because they make dossier preparation temptingly easy. That is why the American Civil Liberties Union gets so upset when a Social Security number is used beyond its original intent...