On The Constitutional Protection Of The Right Of Privacy

The right of privacy is defined as a kind of right that a citizen's private life is free from being peeped, monitored, disclosed, infringed, and intruded. Privacy right is an inherent one of human rights. It is the most important and fundamental part of all civil rights and is indispensable. As an embodiment of personal dignity in private domain, the right of privacy serves as a precondition and basis for maintaining personal dignity, and also as a great shelter for protecting personal dignity. However, with the establishment of welfare state and the application of science and techniques, the authority of state has expanded and pervaded every aspect of citizens' private lives, which has greatly threaten and infringed citizens' privacy. Thus, the necessity for protecting the right of privacy by the Constitution is plain to see. All the countries in the world are laboring for improving the protection of the right of privacy. Practical experience and theories abroad on protection of the right of privacy by the Constitution are quite mature. Some International human rights documents, such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenants of Human Rights, also contain clear-cut provisions on the right of privacy. As an inevitable requirement for modern democratic constitutionalism, the protection of the right of privacy by the Constitution presents a trend of internationalization. In China, however, because of influences of traditional culture and political factors, the right of privacy is overlooked by citizens and its legal protection is absent. The phenomenon that the authority of state infringes citizen's privacy is serious. So the establishment of constitutional protection system on privacy is at the top of the agenda for perfecting China's protection of the right of privacy. In more specific terms, first, citizens' traditional concepts on privacy should be changed to foster modern concepts on privacy, that is, right-oriented and individual-oriented concepts. Second, the term of "personal dignity" should be enhanced to the head of citizens' fundamental rights by rewriting the Constitution to make it the basic value term of Chinese citizens' basic rights protection; meanwhile the Constitution also should clearly stipulate the right of privacy. Third, a system on judicial review of constitution and an administrative remedy system on privacy should be established; remedy on invasion of privacy should be perfected, so that the constitutional protection on privacy can be effectively implemented.