Development of Rights to Data Privacy in Thailand

Abstract

The development of Thai Personal Data Protection has been slow due to the lack of specific law that can generally applied to all situation. At first, Thailand applied this form of protection only on rules of tort in both civil law and criminal law for violating disclosed secrets and defamation. Consequently, public law was introduced to protect the rights, including the constitutional provisions and others laws such as, the Official Information Act 2540, Credit information Business Act B.E.2545, Computer Crime Act B.E.2550, etc., which has the characteristics to protect some specific personal data at some certain types. However, there is no general law that can applied to all kind of personal data protection. Not until the upcoming of the promulgation of the Personal Data Protection Act B.E. 2562. This is the first time that Thailand has established the personal data protection law in the form of general law. Notwithstanding, because of the rapid change of new information technology and the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. Therefore, Thailand needs to develop both the principles of law and the process of enforcement. The personal data protection need to be international standard in order to cope with the possible pressure from the new international rules and regulation that may be the cause of accusation of an unfavourable law that possible cause trade barriers in the future.