Research On The Legal Protection Of Privacy In Modern America

In 1890,Samuel D.Warren and Louis D.Brandeis jointly published an article"The Right to Privacy" in The fourth issue of Harvard law review,which opened a new chapter in The study of American Privacy theory.In the following years,driven by a lot of legal scholars and entity cases,the privacy protection of the United States gradually showed an international trend in the process of making remarkable achievements in the field of privacy rights.Both countries of Anglo-American law system and countries of continental law system began to protect privacy rights as an important personality right.As countries all over the world have recognized the right to privacy,as well as the improvement of national cultural level and legal accomplishment in recent years,the awareness of the need to maintain private space is increasingly strong.As a country that has experienced a long history of small-scale peasant economy and society,China is deeply influenced by history,culture and traditional concepts.It started late to pay attention to and study the right to privacy,and its protection level is still in a backward state.In this paper,the author will take historical analysis,comparative analysis and case analysis as the main research methods,combined with the social background at that time to discuss the dynamic evolution process of American privacy right from scratch,from negative right to positive right.It is hoped that in the process of exploring the mature legal mechanism of privacy protection in the United States,some feasible reference opinions can be provided for the establishment of privacy protection in China,so as to further improve the relevant legal system of privacy in China and create a better legal environment for the road of modernization and civilization development in China.This paper is divided into five parts.The first part expounds the background of the generation and development of American privacy right.American privacy right originates from the "yellow news era".In the social contradiction between citizens' increasing demand for privacy rights and the news media's random exposure of others' privacy without the bottom line of professional ethics,privacy right in the United States has begun to receive widespread attention from legal scholars and relevant people of all parties due to case-type infringement events.After entering the Internet era,the development of the Internet makes the flow of personal information privacy more free and rapid than any other era,and the commercial value of personal privacy is also unprecedentedly high,which leads to the social status of large-scale privacy infringement.The second part discusses three legal bases of privacy protection in modern America:common law,constitution and federal law.These three legal bases objectively demonstrate the development of the legal protection of privacy in the United States.From the initial recognition of privacy right in common law cases to the later confirmation of it as a constitutional right,to the development history of the federal government making federal laws in specific fields,it also means that American privacy right has completed a perfect transformation from the initial passive defense right to active right attribute.In the third part,according to the time line of the development and reform of the modern privacy right in the United States,the American privacy right is divided into six types:material privacy right,information privacy right,network privacy right,name privacy right,portrait privacy right,reputation privacy right and self-determination privacy right.The continuous expansion of the type also indicates the precondition for the confirmation and protection of American privacy right--the change from"substantial physical invasion" to "reasonable expectation of privacy interest",which makes American privacy right become the right of personality representing human dignity.In the fourth part,the author summarized the four principles of privacy treatment in modern America,including the principle of non-transfer-ability,the principle of reasonable privacy expectation interest,the principle of consent and disclosure irreversibility,and the principle of national security priority.Among them,the principle of "reasonable expectation of privacy interests" is the most important principle,and the privacy subject must conform to the subjective and objective elements in the reasonable expectation of privacy interests to confirm that its violated privacy interests should be protected by law.The last part expounds the enlightenment of American modern privacy protection to the development of privacy in China.The author put forward after know about American privacy content in the process of privacy protection in China can learn from the content of the four,respectively,will be promoted to constitutional rights of privacy rights in our country,expand privacy relief way,adhere to legal regulation,self-discipline and auxiliary management mode and the principle of national security interests.By improving the legal system of privacy protection step by step,China will finally integrate into the trend of international privacy rights protection.