The Administrative Law Of Personal Information Protection

Nowadays, people are in an era of information explosion. In such a society, allkinds of information is collected, stored, used, destructed through the internet andcomputer in the world. The personal information, as the most valuable resource intwenty-first Century, it plays an important role. At the same time, we are also in theera of public right, people pay more and more attention to the protection of their legalrights. Therefore, protection of personal information has become an important topicby the public. The infringement and abuse of personal information by the publicorgans such as the government during the process of fulfilling the administrativefunctions happen frequently in recent years. As the prevention of public authorityfrom violating the personal information has become a focus of legislation, it isinevitable for protecting the personal information from the perspective of theAdministrative Law. However, both the theoretical research and legislative protectionare relatively backward on that issue. China, thus, must speed up its efforts inprotecting the personal information for the perspective of the Administrative Law soas to prevent the violation of the public authority to the personal information.The paper is divided into four parts.The first part made some definitions on the basic issues of personal information,entailing the expressions, concepts and characteristics. Meanwhile it illustrated thebasic principles of the Administrative Law on protecting the personal information.The second part of the paper introduced the status quo of the protection of thepersonal information by the Administrative Law in China and reviewed the issue inthe area of public laws. On this basis, such demerits was drawn as most of theprotection items are formulated in abstract terms with no specific definitions on therights and obligations nor corresponding protecting mechanisms. The third part of thepaper introduced the protection of personal information by the Administrative Law inforeign countries, summarized the models adopted in America, Germany and Britainand drew their experience on this issue. Finally, the fourth part clarified the logicalprerequisite of the protection of personal information by the Administrative Law, thatis, the rights of the citizens are capable enough to restrict the national power, which,in turn, is also capable enough to prevent the abuse of citizen rights. On the basis ofthose, some strategies were put forward for constructing the legislative system. A decentralized legislative system is recommended to build a system of the rights andobligations of the personal information. Moreover, it was also suggested to establishan independent protecting institution, propose the measures for preventing the abuseof citizen rights and combine those measures with the open government information.