Asian Legal Review

In a significant development for privacy law in Australia, the Administrative Review Tribunal has released its decision following a review of the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s decision on Bunnings’ use of facial recognition technology.

Criminals in Southeast Asia are harnessing inexpensive AI tools to target bigger pools of potential victims at high speed, keeping scam centres humming even as governments try to crack down, senior officials at Interpol say.
Previously, some scams were easy to spot – from poor quality online ads luring people to work in such centres to the scams themselves, typically designed to make people part with their money through the promise of romance or investment returns.
Now, scammers are using large…

Nationalism, a deep network of local patronage and a promise to safeguard Thailand’s faltering economy catapulted Anutin Charnvirakul back into the prime minister’s office.
By his own admission, the win exceeded expectations. His Bhumjaithai Party secured 193 of the 500 parliamentary seats, according to early unofficial tallies late on Monday – “even more than I asked for”, Anutin told reporters – albeit from what looks likely to be one of Thailand’s lowest voter turnouts in decades.
Analysts…

In a significant development for privacy law in Australia, the Administrative Review Tribunal has released its decision following a review of the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s decision on Bunnings’ use facial recognition technology.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Monday warned against allowing disputes over “illegal” houses of worship to spill into communal confrontation, after police detained 19 people linked to a planned rally in central Kuala Lumpur that authorities said risked inflaming racial and religious tensions.
The “Anti-Illegal Houses of Worship” rally had been scheduled for around 8pm on Saturday near Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, close to the Sogo shopping complex. Police denied permission on security…

Abandoned for months on their fishing boat off West Africa, Indonesian sailor Surono and his shipmates face a dilemma: return home without almost a year’s wages or stay on the docked vessel.
He is among a growing number of migrant workers abandoned by shipowners, who flout their obligations and desert crews without paying the salaries owed.
“My family cries because I can’t get any money. My children and wife need money to eat,” Surono, 47, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said from…

The faint outline of a hand in a cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi has been recognised as the world’s oldest known rock art, shattering a long-held scientific theory that human artistic expression first flourished in Ice Age Europe.
Dating back at least 67,800 years, the faded stencil was found hiding beneath a more recent chicken sketch in Metanduno cave on Muna Island.
Researchers say the finding, which was published in the scientific journal Nature on January 21, proves that ancient humans in…

Thais began voting on Sunday in an election pitting the reformist People’s Party against the conservative Bhumjaithai Party, with expectations of a tight race among a divided public craving an end to the country’s long economic drift and political instability.
Around 53 million Thais are eligible to vote for 500 lower house lawmakers, 400 directly from their constituencies and the remaining 100 decided on a proportional basis from the number of votes each party gets.
Barring a shock landslide…

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb said on Saturday it ‌had accidentally given away more than US$40 billion worth ‍of bitcoin to customers as promotional rewards, triggering a sharp selloff on the exchange.
Bithumb apologised for the mistake, which ⁠took place on Friday, and said it had recovered 99.7 per cent of the 620,000 bitcoin, worth about US$44 billion at current prices. It had restricted trading and withdrawals for ‍the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the ‍erroneous…

Hashim Djojohadikusumo is smiling almost beatifically, but the trademark feistiness is unmistakable. We are sitting down for a chat amid the turmoil gripping Indonesia’s capital markets and he says emphatically that “it’s good, it’s good” that it happened.
This unvarnished answer is one of several he gives as we talk about his country, nearly two years after his elder brother, Prabowo Subianto, won the presidential election by a wide margin, securing 58.6 per cent of the votes on his third…