Research On Restriction Of Public Officials’Privacy

In the context of the current information, as an important human right, privacy has showed its great values of protecting personal privacy interests and individual dignity. At the same time, most of the civilized nations are committed to monitoring public officials, the direct exerciser of government’s power, with the development of democracy. As a result, limiting public officials’ privacy has been attached importance by many countries. Through the analysis of China’s achievement of system construction and the basic theory on the restriction of public officials’ privacy, the paper demonstrates the feasibility and the necessity of the restrictions of public officials’ privacy, introduces some experience of other countries, and then tries to provide some advice on the legalization of the restriction of public officials’ privacy. The author holds the opinion that public officials privacy should both be limited and protected. On one hand, we should protect the public supervision of public officials’ privacy and reduce the risk of being sued because of violations of public officials’ privacy, on the other hand, according to building the system of exposing public officials’ personal information, we should strengthen the supervision of public officials.In the first part, this paper analyzes the legitimacy of the restriction of public officials’ privacy, and points out the key properties of public officials:power character and public character. The legitimacy of the restriction of public officials’ privacy comes from public interests, conflicts of rights and the selection of values. The restriction of public officials’ privacy has its particularity, and the particularity is manifested in the speciality of identity of public officials and the right of privacy. In the second part, the paper firstly distinguishes the two types of the restriction of public officials’ privacy:the restriction of privacy maintenance and the restriction of privacy concealing. The right of privacy maintenance means everyone has the right to prevent his privacy from violating and has the right to judicial relief if violations occur. The right of privacy concealing means everyone has the right to prevent his privacy from disclosing. In this part, from the perspective of the restriction of privacy maintenance, the author proposes the principles of the restriction of privacy maintenance:the principle of public interests, the principle of proportionality and the principle of law reservation. And through the research of the practice of Germany, the author proposes the measure of interests and the case guidance system. The third part is related to the restriction of privacy concealing. The restriction of privacy concealing plays a great role in the supervision of power and the regulation of public officials’ behavior. We must follow the principles of reasonable restriction and necessary protection. On the subjects of declaring, ranks and posts shuold be considered, and public officials’ relatives should also be brought into the subjects; on th contents of declaring, the contents should be related to the integrity and post; on the manner of disclosure, both complete disclosure and limited disclosure should be considered.There are still many problems in China’s theoretical study and practice today, especially how to deal with the relationship of public supervision and public officials’ privacy, and how to make the system of public officials’ personal information declaring and revealing more effective. The innovation of thia article is the author provides comprehensive survey of both the restriction of privacy maintenance and the restriction of privacy concealing, and on the basis of learning from foreign advanced experience, the author puts forward some proposals such as combination of posts and ranks, complete complete disclosure and limited disclosure.