Research On Privacy

Human is an ecological being,spiritual being and social being,and needs for spiritual interest and rights will arise after basic living demands are satisfied,in addition,needs of spatial distance and peace will arise in communicating and association with others.As such,privacy becomes one critical and indispensable part of instinctive demands of human.The generation of privacy rights will typically undergo a process from privacy demand through privacy awareness through privacy interest to privacy right,the value of which lies in respect for personality and protection of personal freedom,safeguarding of emotional needs,advocating of self-determination and peace of personal private life,hence ultimately the personal interdependence and self-fulfillment.Privacy right is not only a kind of right at private law,but a boundary line existing in human relationships,and further an institutional arrangement for communication,utilization and protection of information amongst people,which,through coordination and balancing with other rights such as right-to-know,freedom of speech,will play a role as a modulator between personal interest and public interest.The functionality of privacy right in modern society has shifted from negative defense to active control;from personal arena and space to public arena and space;and privacy right has increasingly taken on more public law features,which is not limited to attributes of civil rights,but in a broader sense,has contents for basic civil rights.Economic factors have been the driving force for the development and evolution of privacy and privacy rights.With development of the economy and as especially driven by the technological improvements.privacy and privacy rights are continuously expanded in respect of content and coverage,e.g.data privacy,genetic privacy,internet privacy etc.The content of privacy has gone from substantive being to a virtual being,for which personal secrecy and personal self-determination and freedom are given equal weight.Especially in an era of network society,privacy is often subject to exposure risk and the immediacy and extensiveness of spreading of information has amplified the consequences of privacy infringement,hence people have more urgent requirements and expectations on privacy than ever before.Because of flourishing of online economy,especially in the context of e-commerce,the property attribute of privacy information has become increasingly prominent,and the demand for legal protection in respect of the property attribute of privacy has become more pressing.The collection,distribution,transfer and use of personal privacy information is burgeoning,which results with lost control of privacy and lack of participation and right-to-know in collection of privacy,and ultimately gives rise to leakage of privacy which is tremendously troublesome,e.g.,the annoying spam text messages,sales calls,which disturb the peace of private life.Citizens living in the uproars of cities longed to have quiet and peaceful living even more badly.An overview of legislative history of privacy law overseas shows that privacy right originated from private law,and was largely confirmed through legal precedents and was included in basic civil rights,hence it has both attributes of constitutional law and private law and is recognized and protected in both regards.In light of this,in China privacy right should be included in the ambit of constitutional rights and should be regulated in a direct protection mode,supplemented by industry discipline,for which protection mechanism of social code of ethics shall be established.Specifically,in respect of legislative framework,we should adopt a top-down approach by setting forth general provisions in Civil Code and enacting a Personal Information Protection Law;in addition,in order to achieve a full protection for privacy right,Supreme Court will create guiding precedents in respect of privacy in a flexible manner to cure the lack of efficiency of the statutes in judicial practices.