Right to privacy

The importance of information sharing can hardly be overemphasized these days. We all benefit from it, all the time.

Its downside, however, is increasingly obvious. When our personal information is sold out and shared by unintended parties, the outcomes can be perilous.

Even the slightest leak can drive us nuts. Many of us have been harassed by unsolicited phone calls, cell phone messages, and junk mails, wanting to sell insurances, golf club memberships, villas, or promising stocks. And, in most cases, we do not even have an interest in what is offered.

In the end, we come to the understanding that we have been sold, by perhaps our mobile communication service provider, or a bank that issued us a credit card, to businesses thirsty for potential customers.

This is no secret. We know it is already a booming business.

We even know, just as a recent China Youth Daily poll found, who the main culprits are - telecommunications operators, job-posting websites, headhunters, and intermediary service providers.

Yet we could not stop them from doing that. Because, up till now, this remains a lawless realm. Maybe not utterly lawless. Some say Article 101 of our Civil Code has covered our right to privacy. But there was no mention of it whatsoever. Instead, it is supposed to be under the right to honor. Which is too indirect to be tangible.

We saw a ray of hope in the recently proposed seventh amendment to the Criminal Law, which is now open for public opinions. It promises "severe penalties" for employees of State organs, post and telecommunications, communications, educational, medical and financial institutions who illicitly leak our private information.

But without the backup of an independent legislation on the protection of personal privacy, even the apparently deterrent Criminal Law will remain toothless, or, as some put it, castles in the air.

The draft of the law on protecting personal information, which has reportedly been submitted to the State Council, is a logical follow-up to the Criminal Law amendment.

Abuse of personal information has escalated into a ubiquitous social evil. We need both laws, as much as they need each other.

But will the new personal information law deliver the degree of protection we want and deserve? This is a question we hope lawmakers will constantly ask themselves.

(China Daily 09/09/2008 page8)