August

Education Ministry official announced that all School administrators have been instructed to run background checks on foreigners applying for work as teachers to weed out convicted paedophiles.

Assistant Minister Thirakiat Charoensethasilp said the directive was sent to every educational institution in the country after the British embassy recently received a report that a British national with a record of child sexual abuse in the UK had applied for a job as a foreign-language teacher in Thailand. Additionally, in the case of British applicants, schools were advised to check the UK 's Association of Chief Police Officers ' (ACRO) Criminal Records Office website to determine if they have a criminal record and require they present an ACRO police certificate.

Along with the concept of personal data, as opposed to anonymous data, the Regulation introduces a third category, that of pseudonymous data.

Pseudonymous data is information that no longer allows the identification of an individual without additional information and is kept separate from it. In exchange for the lower level of privacy intrusion, the applicable requirements are less stringent. At the moment the standards according to which data is considered as anonymous or pseudonymous are established by the DPAs at a national level. Once the Regulation comes into force, the requirements and the applicable regime will become more uniform and this will provide greater legal certainty.

"Under the Data Protection Directive, each instance of data processing requires a legal justification - a ""ground for processing"". This fundamental feature of EU data protection law remains unchanged under the draft Regulation. However, the bar for showing the existence of certain grounds for processing will be set higher, particularly in relation to consent. Businesses will need to review existing templates and procedures to ensure any consents are clearly distinguished. Businesses processing personal data of minors under 13 on the basis of consents will need to prepare strategies for obtaining guardian consents or authorizations. Employers need to minimise the need for obtaining employee or other similarly positioned data subjects ' consent."