Discussion On The Civil Law Protection Of Personal Biometric Information In China

With the development of biometric identification technology(BIT),face scanning payment and fingerprint unlocking have become part of daily routine.As an emerging product of the information era,the application of personal biometric identification technology(PBIT)not only brings great convenience to the society,but also implies great risks.How to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of information subjects while enjoying the good of PBIT is urgent.This paper analyzed the positive impact and negative impact about the protection clauses of biometric information in civil law.The general provisions of the civil law of the People's Republic of China came into force on October 1,2017,in which article 111 stipulates that the personal information of natural persons shall be protected by law.In the forthcoming civil code(draft)of personality rights,the personal information is clearly defined and the personal biometric information is included in the category of personal information,which reflects that the protection of personal biometric information in civil law has begun.However,article 111 only provides general provisions on personal information,without a clear definition,nor does it stipulate personal information as a civil right,and the provisions concerning PBI are entirely blank."Civil code(draft)" has the relevant protective provisions on personal biometric information,but on one side the way it defined in the personal information will be personal use biometric information listed in the way and the natural person's name,date of birth,id number,telephone number,etc,is not sufficient to reflect the particularity of PBI,on the other side,it protects PBI with characteristics of private information in the form of privacy protection,which lead to plaintiff must prove evidence that meet the requirements of the composition of violations of the right of privacy in the procedural illegal infringement lawsuit,but it is hard to prove that information subject has undertaken substantial injury.The failure of proof will result in the failure of the information subject's tort damage compensation lawsuit and its legitimate rights and interests cannot be guaranteed.All these problems indicate that the civil law protection of PBI in China needs to be improved.To solve this problem,this paper first clears the connotation and extension of PBI and its particularity,analyzes the difference from privacy and general personal information.And then states the status quo and insufficiency of the PBI protection of the civil law.Based on that,this paper explores the system construction of civil law protection on PBI rights,namely to clarify the definition borders of the PBI,the ownership on civil law and the detailed content of PBI rights.This paper accelerate the development of regulations on the collection,utilization,storage,transmission and processing of PBI by expressing that a natural person has the PBI right in purpose of forming good trends of the protection and utilization of PBI...