It is very troubling to hear the new Minister of Information and Technology say that her first and main priority will be censorship of the internet. Ranongrak Suwanchawee gathered top officials of her ministry just before the holiday and gave her instructions in no uncertain terms. Their top duty - and hers - will be to ferret out and block websites that officials believe carry insults to the monarchy. In effect, she ordered the expansion of a secret and highly questionable policy started by her predecessor last year. Mrs Ranongrak has clearly embarked on this programme without bothering to find any facts.

Government should not be basing its policies on emotion or political correctness. The project to find and to block questionable websites was escalated last year by the then-People Power party government, and specifically by then minister Mun Patanotai. Acting with neither public support nor government policy, Mr Mun put into practice an opaque policy to find what his officials believed were websites featuring dangerous cases of lese majeste.

Then, instead of reviewing the sites, the ICT Ministry went in secret to the court for an order to authorise the sites to be blocked by an expensive and secretive "Thai firewall". This makes the sites difficult to access by some internet users in Thailand.

The main problem is that this programme has proved as unproductive as it was anti-democratic. Mr Mun's actions and specific list of banned sites were exposed across the internet.

One could fairly say that Mr Mun, and now Mrs Ranongrak, are personally responsible for increasing the interest in 1,203 objectionable, perhaps illegal websites, and for sending more Thais and foreigners alike to see what the fuss is about. They are almost all located outside of Thailand in 22 countries as widespread as Australia, Brazil and Vietnam.

This is not a minor point. Left alone, almost none of the websites would have attracted any interest. But spurred by the government action against them, views at the banned websites have snowballed.

Far more people have viewed the websites because of the bans than if Mr Mun had simply ignored them. That is because it is actually impossible to prevent views of websites, no matter how expensive or extensive the government's firewall. Any semi-skilled young student or office worker these days is aware of half a dozen ways to get around bans on websites.

The means and methods used by the entirely secretive ICT officials and hired web surfers must also be questioned. The list of banned sites includes 860 YouTube videos, several of which only feature Hillary Clinton or Charlie Chaplin.

Certain web pages of the Economist magazine are predictably included, but not a prominent foreign blog with the full Thai translations of the blocked sites. It is troubling to see that 111 popular discussions at Prachatai and Same Sky forums have been blocked from inside Thailand - again, without any public notice.

Mrs Ranongrak should commit immediately to a new policy of openness. The ICT ministry is vital to the development of education and knowledge, and its role as a censor is counter-productive. Police and secret web-surfing offices have an interest in finding and declaring risks to national security. Often, no such danger exists.

The new minister should instead demand a democratic method, transparent to all. A healthy, public debate can decide when a risk is great enough to seek a court order for an internet ban.