Research On The Object Of The Right To Privacy In Cyberspace

The purpose of this thesis is to study the object of the right to privacy. Generally,"privacy" is widely considered to be the object of the right to privacy. However, there is little systematic study on the definition of privacy. And the reasons why we should protect privacy still need further explanations. In an era of information and networks, the protection of people’s privacy rights is facing tough challenges, and the Snowden event just proved it. Meanwhile, the digitization and virtualization of the Internet have also led to the changing of privacy theory. So, it is meaningful and necessary to explore the object of the right to privacy, especially in cyberspace.Although "privacy" is a subjective concept, it is possible to define it in law within certain geographical areas in a specific period of time. By collecting and analyzing the current privacy laws and regulations in America, European Union and China, I find that the legal objects of privacy in those countries coincidentally involve three different types, including information privacy, behavior privacy and space privacy, which the Chinese civil law scholars usually express as private secret, private activity and private space."Privacy" was created to protect people’s human dignity, liberty, feeling and peaceful life, and the mentioned three types of objects just show these values. Once we find the key point and values of privacy, it will not be a big problem to analyze the object of the right to privacy in cyberspace. Actually, the biggest challenge to privacy rights brought by the development of the Internet is not on privacy theory. The real threat comes from the rise of the concept of the right to personal information. Some scholars even hold the opinions that the right to privacy could be replaced by the other one in cyberspace. However, privacy and personal information are two different concepts. For example, the private space and activity are obviously not included in the notion of personal information. Some may argue that there is no space and activity in cyberspace, because everything existing online is data, which is able to be converted into information. But I think the private space and private activity are two abstract notions, which can’t be easily described as data."Data" is the existing method of them rather than the objects themselves. So, they should be treated differently. In addition, I also discussed the theory of "related privacy" and "the relativity of privacy" in cyberspace, so as to contradict the fallacy that there is no privacy in the environment of the Internet.At last, my conclusion is that the object of the right to privacy includes private secret information, private cyber activity and private cyberspace.