Thailand government listens in on entire country’s 33 million Line users, says ICT minister (UPDATE: Line denies)

ICT Minister Pornchai Rujiprapa at a press conference yesterday said Thai authorities “can monitor all of the nearly 40 million Line messages sent by people in Thailand each day,” according to The Nation.

The minister said citizens can lodge complaints with police if they receive messages that “offend the monarchy and threaten national security.”

Update: Line responded to Tech in Asia, refuting the ICT Minister’s claims:

The comment of some news articles that the government party monitors users’ LINE messages is not true.
It is technically impossible to monitor LINE’s conversation by any third party.
LINE user privacy is our top priority.

We do not allow other 3rd party to monitor LINE users’ messages due to our global policy.

Line on December 26 sent us further assurance that the ICT Minister either misspoke or was misquoted:

LINE has confirmed with ICT (Ministry of Information and Communication Technology) that ICT denies the alleged fact of LINE messages being monitored by ICT.

Since LINE has been encrypted all messages, it is technically impossible to monitor LINE’s conversation by any third party.

LINE users’ privacy is our top priority, hence we do not allow other third party to monitor LINE messages.

Thailand has about 33 million Line users, Rujiprapa said, in a country with a population of 67 million.

We first got word of the Thai police’s intent to wiretap Line conversations in August 2013. The Thai Prime Minister then said all surveillance would be conducted on a case-by-case basis. Other social networks and chat apps were not to be monitored because those companies – Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc – would not allow such an investigation.

A few days after that report, Line stated it had not received an official request from the Thai government.