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Thailand’s Personal Identification Blacklist Immigration Control System (PIBICS)
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests we are discussing an Immigration data base here in the Kingdom known as PIBICS, which stands for Personal Identification Blacklist Immigration Control System.
Let me just jump into some of the articles which cite some discussion on this topic and then we will get into a little bit of discussion and analysis. Coming from the article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the title is Immigration Police Gear Up for Moto GP Invasion September 29, 2018. Basically the article, and I urge those who are watching this to go ahead and read it, I am just going to paraphrase some brief talking points on it. Basically the Moto GP was kind of a big event here in Thailand that resulted in a lot of foreigners coming in from abroad and for that reason they went ahead and implemented certain, for lack of a better term, proactive immigration measures and one of those noted, to quote directly from that article, “The Immigration Bureau’s Blacklist Immigration Control System will be up and running at the airport to try and identify criminal suspects who may try to sneak in. Clearly Immigration has begun implementing heightened security and monitoring mechanisms on farang and on pretty much anybody that is going to be passing through Immigration checkpoints here in the Kingdom.
To take this a little bit further, another article, again from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com October 9, 2018. Article is entitled, Airport Officers Transferred over Bribes. There was another note which stated Lieutenant General Kongcheep added the foreign national’s identity data base has to be integrated with the Immigration Airport’s to help identify more quickly those who might pose as a threat to National Security. So again there is this data base. It is primarily being used for purposes of identification but it is being linked into the Immigration data base more and more.
In another article from the Nation, that is nationmultimedia.com. This was published quite a long time ago, February 1st, 2016. The article is entitled New Immigration Screening System Unveiled and going into this a little bit further. There is another video specifically on this topic on this website. It discusses the APPS System but we are specifically looking at the PBSICS System. To quote directly from this article, “The system is being used alongside other security tools including the Personal Identification Blacklist Immigration Control System, the Case Management Intelligence System, CCTV Surveillance and the CRIME System, (CRIMES is an acronym). This is kind of the important point. All of these systems are operated and monitored by the Immigration 24/7 Center which aims to be the hub of Thailand’s Immigration procedures to help improve National security. The Immigration center at Suan Phlu’s Immigration Division 1 will have officers monitoring the incoming data 24 hours a day.
Okay, what is going on here? Well first of all they are creating a data base which specifically deals with those who are blacklisted or those who prospectively would become blacklisted. There is another program called the APPS System which I go into at length in another video on this channel but those who are watching this one note further, this data base is not being set up as a stand-alone. It is being integrated into the Immigration System and for this reason, those who have previously over stayed visas, those who have been blacklisted, even those who have prior criminal records in the Kingdom, probably are going to have that information more and more integrated into the Immigration system so it is probably a safer bet as time goes by, that even folks with issues that are rather old that they may have sort of thought had fallen by the wayside if you will they could come roaring back to life in an immigration context through these identity base systems which are being integrated into the overall Immigration system. The other thing that I think is going to happen as a result of this is adjudicating Immigration Officers at port of entries in the Kingdom of Thailand, for example airports, seaports, land checkpoints over land borders here in the Kingdom, those officers are more and more going to have an integrated data base at their fingertips when adjudicating the entry of a foreign national to go ahead and make a determination as to whether or not that foreign national should be admitted to the Kingdom of Thailand. Those with possible criminal histories, those with possible arrest histories, those with possible Immigration violations in the past, you have been warned. These systems are being brought on line and it is possible that you are going to go ahead and see them implemented at border checkpoints in the relatively near future.
How this is going to exactly play out remains to be seen but it is clear from the Moto GP event Immigration is bringing this out more and more proactively and I think we are going to see it integrated into the general system probably within the next 3-5 years. It is just going to be part and parcel of how they go ahead and adjudicate those incoming into the Kingdom of Thailand.