THE HACKER who broke into the Constitutional Court website and changed the name to kangaroo court was jailed for one year and six months and fined 87,227 baht today (August 18), Naewna newspaper said.
The Criminal Court on Ratchadapisek said in its verdict that the defendant, Mr. Wachira Suphathien, 34, had pleaded guilty on the charges of illegally hacking the Constitutional Court’s website and changing the name to kangaroo court.
In doing so the defendant had illegally accessed a protected computer system and data with the intention of damaging, destroying, modifying, altering or supplementing in part or the whole system so that it halts, slows down, is interrupted or disrupted.
As the defendant had committed a wrongdoing the court sentenced him to three years in imprisonment. However as he pleaded guilty this was reduced to one year and six months in jail. As this is considered a serious offence imprisonment is not deferred.
Mr. Noraset Na Nongtoom, an attorney at Lawyers for Human Rights Centre, said the Constitutional Court had asked for a total of 10,288,972 baht in damages with reputational damages set at 10 million baht.
However it so turned out that the Constitutional Court cannot claim reputational damages under Section 44/1 of the Criminal Code because this section applies to criminal indictment.
This case comes under the Computer Crimes Act and not for reputational damages and it was ruled that the Constitutional Court had no right to make this claim.
The court therefore ordered the defendant to pay 87,227 baht for damages with 10 million baht for reputational damages being dismissed.
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Top: A hacker. Photo: Richard Patterson http://www.comparitech.co (CC BY 2.0)
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