Reflections On Criminal Responsibility Of ISP For Privacy Invasion

With the significant increase of new citizens per annum, the daily life of every body in our society has been involved by the cyber world. Not only our every day life is affected severely, but also the traditional legal system will get challenge and impact. Since large amount of personal information is uploaded into the cyberspace, as a new right online privacy receives attention from the public. As the suppliers of the information and platform, internet service providers cannot shirk the responsibility of the phenomenon that online privacy rights are infringed frequently.The development of network technology in our country lags behind that of the developed countries so that there are no uniform regulations about online privacy and little legislation, the narrations of which covers such issues as vagueness and generality, are enacted about the infringements of online privacy by internet service provider. Such infringements cases are not rare and the providers just undertake civil liability, and barely the criminal responsibility. However, because the online privacy infringements are disseminated in a wide range, a short time, and with great social impact, it is impossible to impede the greedy internet service providers who are breaking the law to make a profit at the cost of personal privacy of net citizens just by the punishment of civil liability. If online privacy is published and the internet service providers are at the state of omission, the criminals will stick at nothing to infringe online privacy so it is necessary to take internet service providers as criminal subjects.The Amendment to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (Ⅶ) clearly states:" Any staff member of a State body, or an organization of finance, telecommunication, transportation, education, or health care, etc., violate the State regulations, by selling or illegally providing the citizens'personal information obtained during the course of performing duties or providing services, and in such cases if the circumstances are serious, then such staff member shall be sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention with a fine imposed concurrently or shall be only subject to a fine, " That's an official of the Criminal Law to protect the privacy of individual citizens of relevant provision. But the terms are not expressly subject of the crime internet services provider status, internet services providers violate individual privacy in a legal vacuum, That's extremely detrimental to the protection of privacy of individual citizens and the network specifications. Therefore, standardizing the behavior of internet service providers and including them in the subject of criminal responsibility which violate individual privacy, is a powerful privacy protection, but also a strong guarantee to promote the healthy development of the network.