Cambodia will route all internet traffic through the national internet gateway

Cloud4Y has already talked about how some progressive countries are working on the implementation of state firewalls, largely copying the Chinese concept of information control. They decided to follow their example in Cambodia.

On February 17th, Facebook posted text of the decree on the creation of a national Internet gateway that will filter all traffic entering the country or passing through the networks within its borders. The document says that the state Internet gateway will increase the effectiveness of protecting the country’s national security and help maintain social order and culture.

All local ISPs and telecom operators will have to route traffic through the national gateway. Companies that are found to be in violation of this law may have bank accounts frozen or licenses revoked.

The first version of the bill to use the national Internet gateway received a huge portion of criticism for giving the Cambodian government the right to censor content. That is, it limited democracy and freedom of speech, allowed to distort the facts. Therefore, the decree was amended.

The new ordinance sets out an appeal procedure that gives the Cambodian Council of Ministers the final authority to block content. On paper, this sounds good, except that Cambodia is a de facto one-party state, in which opposition parties are banned, and all 125 parliamentary seats belong to the government. That is, decisions will still be made in the interests of the party. This means that it will be almost impossible to avoid blocking or cancel it later if the content does not suit the government of the country.

The decision to create a Cambodian Internet gateway is further accentuated by data on a sharp increase in the number of citizens who are threatened, persecuted and even persecuted for “dissent”, which is expressed in the publication on various online platforms of messages criticizing the authorities, complaints of harassment, etc. … About this trend recently stated Chuck Sophip, Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

Be that as it may, the decree has been published. And now, by February 2022, companies must rebuild their networks so that all traffic goes through the national Internet gateway.

The issue of collecting and storing any data passing through this gateway has not yet been raised. Perhaps, while this is in the plans, and only after some time will appear cloud storage or other infrastructure used for these purposes. But Cambodia’s “sovereign internet” is on its way.

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