Derogation And Boundary Of Personal Information Rights In Public Health Emergencies In China

Public health risks arising from major infectious diseases pose a serious threat to the life and health safety of the public.Government agencies have the responsibility to prevent and resolve major social risks and maintain social stability.In the process of fulfilling this responsibility,government agencies need to call on various available resources.Personal information plays an important role in the response to public health emergencies as a decision-making resource for government agencies to prevent public health risks.The use of personal information is indispensable both for responding to the emergency needs of social risks and for meeting the daily needs of administration.It is only in the special context of social risks such as public health emergencies that government agencies are granted administrative emergency powers to protect the public interest such as life and health safety.Administrative emergency power is an expanded form of administrative power.It is a form of administrative power that gives government agencies the power to "act on the cheap" when dealing with emergency situations.The power of governmental authorities to "act on the cheap" in dealing with personal information is reflected in the ability to collect and disclose personal information of patients in the form of flow reports,etc.,without the consent of the subject of the information.The right to personal information includes the right of the information subject to give prior informed consent to the collection and disclosure of his or her personal information.This "informed consent exemption" is in fact a basic manifestation of the expanded public power to restrict the right to personal information.However,there is always a tension between public power and individual rights,because there is a conflict between the purpose of exercising public power and the interest needs of individual rights.The purpose of exercising public power is to maintain social stability and normal operation,while the interest needs of individual rights are to maximize the protection of their own rights and interests.The personal information handling behavior of government agencies,especially those at local levels,gradually takes on the color of "excessive epidemic prevention",and the phenomenon of improper handling of personal information and thus infringement of citizens’ personal legitimate rights and interests occurs.By examining the epidemic prevention and control practices of government agencies,it can be found that there are different degrees of unreasonableness in the authorized information processing subjects,the scope of information collection,and the scope of information disclosure by government agencies.This shows that the handling of personal information by government agencies based on the purpose of maintaining public interests does not automatically mean that the process and means of their personal information handling are justified,and still requires rationalization and regulation of their personal information handling by law.The problem of dealing with the personal information handling behavior of government agencies is to deal with the relationship between public power and private rights,which fundamentally lies in how to balance the relationship between public interests and individual rights.A reasonable balance between the two is the need to contour the boundaries of rights derogation.The lack of clarity in the boundary of power expansion of administrative emergency power can cause undue damage to the legitimate rights of individuals.Unlike the right-obligation relationship between equal subjects,in an asymmetric power structure,more attention should be paid to preventing the risk of rights infringement.Therefore,when responding to public health emergencies,it is necessary to optimize the normative path of personal information rights derogation from the inside out.The internal optimization lies in transforming the concept of personal information protection of government agencies and establishing risk prevention as the purpose;the external optimization is to refine the special rules for handling personal information during public health emergencies from the position of limiting the administrative emergency power with risk prevention as the guide.