Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw)

Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) is a Bangkok-based civil society organisation using communication, advocacy, and public engagement to advance democratic principles, freedom of expression, and civil and political rights in Thailand. Founded in 2009, iLaw operates the country's most comprehensive documentation database of freedom of expression violations and has become one of Thailand's central civil society actors on AI-enabled surveillance accountability — through co-investigation of state-deployed spyware, documentation of biometric surveillance, and engagement with data protection law as it bears on automated surveillance of civil society.

Founding and mandate

iLaw was established in 2009, initially as a project of the Thai Volunteer Service Foundation, by Jon Ungphakorn (1947–2025) — a prominent Thai human rights activist, former Bangkok Senator (2000–2006), and co-founder of both the AIDS Access Foundation and the Prachatai online newspaper. Ungphakorn served as executive director until 2022 and died in May 2025. The organisation's stated mandate is evidence-based research, legal reform advocacy, and public participation to advance democratic governance, free expression, and legal accountability. iLaw is a member organisation of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and maintains active partnerships with Amnesty International, the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, and the Thai Netizen Network.

AI surveillance investigations

iLaw's most significant AI-accountability work has been as a co-investigator with Citizen Lab and Digital Reach on two major spyware investigations. The July 2022 GeckoSpy report documented Pegasus spyware — developed by NSO Group and sold to governments — targeting at least 30 Thai pro-democracy activists and civil society members between 2020 and 2021, including student protest leaders, lawyers, and academics who participated in the 2020–2021 pro-democracy demonstrations. A companion report, "Parasite that Smiles," documented a second cluster of Pegasus infections targeting Thai dissidents. iLaw's role in both investigations — contributing local civil society knowledge, activist networks, and on-the-ground documentation — made it a model for the researcher-civil-society partnership the global Pegasus accountability effort depended on.

These investigations are the corpus's primary case of AI-powered surveillance tools deployed against a grassroots democratic movement: commercial spyware marketed as counter-terrorism infrastructure turned against domestic activists pressing for democratic reform and constitutional change.

iLaw has also documented Thailand's deployment of AI-driven facial recognition systems, including mandated biometric data collection from mobile phone users in the southern border provinces with no meaningful consent mechanism, and the integration of AI-enabled monitoring into the infrastructure used to track protest activity.

Data protection and the Computer Crimes Act

iLaw has engaged with Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA, 2019) as it intersects with automated surveillance, arguing that the PDPA as implemented is insufficient to constrain state collection and processing of personal data through AI-enabled surveillance infrastructure. iLaw's research on the Computer-Related Crime Act — Thailand's primary legal instrument for restricting online expression — documents how the act's provisions enable content takedowns and arrests that function at scale, creating a chilling environment for digital expression and participation.

In March 2025, leaked documents from Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) identified iLaw as a named target of the government's "Cyber Team," a coordinated operation conducting social media harassment, disinformation campaigns, and cyberattacks against civil society organisations. Amnesty International confirmed and reported the findings. The Cyber Team's methodology — automated amplification of disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behaviour — shows that the same AI-enabled tactics deployed to surveil activists are also wielded against the organisations monitoring that surveillance.

Freedom of expression database and constitutional campaigns

iLaw operates freedom.ilaw.or.th, a comprehensive database documenting legal cases involving freedom of expression violations in Thailand, including lèse-majesté (Article 112), sedition, assembly restrictions, computer crimes, and defamation, covering over a thousand cases with legal analysis. It is the primary civil society archive of expression-related prosecutions in Thailand.

In 2020–2021 iLaw led the "Join Together, Build Together, Draft Together Constitution" campaign, collecting more than 100,000 citizen signatures for a constitutional amendment proposal — exceeding the 50,000-signature minimum required for parliamentary submission. iLaw has also anchored the Coalition to Repeal Section 112 and co-operates a public assembly monitoring programme with Amnesty International at mobdatathailand.org, documenting protest events with a view to generating accountability for restrictions on assembly rights.