On Legal Regulation Of Interception

Since the beginning of 21 st century, the crime situation in the world has reached a point of extreme gravity. Not only the number of crimes have increased sharply, but also the criminal means have become more and more organized, intelligent and subtle. New types of crime come out quickly, and serious crimes often occur in society. The traditional means of investigation cannot play an effect role in the detections of such new crimes and serious crimes. So investigators have to face so many difficulties in the detections of such crimes. For changing this situation, many countries in the world fix their eye on special means of investigations such as interception. Interception has the characteristics of confidentiality and technicality. By using interception, investigators can get the evidence of such crimes easily. So interception has been treated as a ‘Trump Card’ for investigating the crime. However, interception is one of compulsory measures in criminal procedures. And citizens’ basic rights must be damaged by the using of interception. For finding the balance point between crime-control and human rights’ protection, legislatures of the United States of America, Japan and Germany, have regulate interception in strict rules by following some legal principles. However, in China, interception is considered as state confidentiality, so legislators have to regulate interception under the name of “Technical Investigation Measures”. In a long term, there was no legal regulation of interception in public until National People’s Congress passed 2012 “Criminal Procedure Law”. But the law about interception in China has so many legal loopholes and mostly focused on empowering investigators to use interception, instead of restraining the abuse of interception. So abuse of interception often occur in practice, and almost becomes a trend. Legal regulation of interception in China should be revised without delay, by following the legislative experience of other countries and meeting the requirements of Principle of Legal Reservation, the Principle of Judicial Review, the Principle of Proportion and the Principle of Right Remedy.