Thailand adopts first data protection act

On 28 February 2019, the Thailand Personal Data Protection Act was approved by the National Legislative Assembly. Thailand did not have any consolidated law governing data protection in general before, and according to Reuters, the bill intends to imitate the EU’s general data protection regulation (GDPR). The data protection act has been adopted in parallel to a controversial cybersecurity law, giving sweeping powers to state agencies for censoring content and accessing computer data and networks.