Research On Civil Public Welfare Lawsuit On Personal Information Protection

Today,with the rapid development of the data industry,personal information spreads faster and more widely,and social life is becoming more convenient.However,inevitably,they have to face the situation of personal information rights being infringed.At present,it is generally believed that citizens’ personal information has both private interests and public benefits.When large-scale violations of personal information rights seriously harm the interests of the majority,personal information has "stakeholder characteristics",and the rights and interests of numerous victims’ personal information are gathered and aggregated,and the public and social attributes of personal information are reflected.Therefore,in order to safeguard social and public interests,it is extremely necessary to establish a civil public interest litigation system in the field of personal information protection and include personal information protection in the legal scope of public interest litigation.In the Personal Information Protection Law,the article 70 includes the protection of personal information into the legal field of civil public interest litigation,and defines the system of civil public interest litigation for the protection of personal information.Civil public interest litigation for personal information protection refers to the legal public authority or specific social organization in order to maintain the security of social personal information against illegal personal information processing behavior of the people’s court in accordance with the law,according to the different objects of the lawsuit,civil public interest litigation and administrative public interest litigation.In terms of legislation,the article 70 of the Personal Information Protection Law generally stipulates the conditions for filing a civil public interest lawsuit for the protection of personal information: First,the subjects of prosecution are the procuratorial organs,statutory consumer organizations and organizations recognized by the Cyberspace Administration of China.However,except the procuratorial organs as the clear subjects of prosecution in civil public interest litigation for personal information protection,the scope of subjects and identification standards of the other two organizations are not clearly stipulated.In practice,it usually refers to the scope of litigation subject of consumer public interest litigation.Secondly,the eligible defendant is a personal information processor,that is,an organization or individual who independently decides the purpose and way of processing personal information processing.Thirdly,handling personal information in violation of the provisions of this Law.The Personal Information Protection Law has comprehensively summarized and integrated the information processing behaviors scattered in other laws and regulations,and there is no need to refer to other provisions when determining the behavior of personal information processing.Fourthly,many personal rights and interests were damaged,but the law did not make detailed provisions on "numerous",resulting in fuzzy scope of accepting cases in practice.To sum up,although the Personal Information Protection Law stipulates the civil public interest litigation system for the protection of personal information,the relevant provisions are ambiguous,and the identification norms of the scope of subjects of prosecution,the issue of the order of prosecution and the scope of accepting cases are not specific,resulting in many legislative deficiencies of the system.In terms of judicial practice,procuratorial organs and some local consumer associations have also accumulated a lot of experience in protecting personal information.At the beginning of 2018,Jiangsu Province Consumer Council launched the "first shot" and filed the first consumer civil public interest lawsuit in the field of personal information protection.It filed a civil public interest lawsuit with Nanjing Municipal People’s Court against “Baidu app” for violating the rights and interests of many consumers’ personal information without "notification + consent" before obtaining users’ personal information.After rectification,the lawsuit was withdrawn through mediation.Effectively protect the consumer’s personal information security.In2021,the Supreme People’s Procuratorate published 11 typical demonstration cases of civil public interest litigation on personal information protection,actively promoted the implementation of the Personal Information Protection Law,and contributed procuratorial force to safeguarding personal information security.However,with the increase of judicial practice cases,many problems have gradually surfaced.In order to further study the system of civil public interest litigation for personal information protection,this thesis searches a certain number of judicial practice cases of civil public interest litigation for personal information protection.(including 11 typical cases released by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate)there are still some problems to be solved in the application of this system in judicial practice,which are mainly embodied in: first,the lack of norms for the identification of powerful social organizations by legislation and the strong promotion of procuratorial public interest litigation to protect personal information by the state,leading to the low enthusiasm of social organizations to Sue and the decline of their awareness of active rights protection;Second,the clues of personal information infringement cases come from a single source,and the procuratorial organs rely too much on the investigation of criminal cases and do not pay enough attention to social concerns.Thirdly,the application of punitive damages system has no legal basis.In view of this,in order to improve the personal information protection civil public interest litigation system,it is necessary to give priority to make up for the shortcomings of legislation and solve the problems in practice.In the concrete measures,clear the scope of the subject of prosecution and prosecution sequence;Specifying the criteria for determining the conditions of prosecution;Expand the case clues;Optimize the distribution of burden of proof;Refine the scope of legal responsibility and the application of the punitive damages system,hoping to improve the relevant social organizations to participate in the enthusiasm of personal information protection in civil public interest litigation,reinforcing prosecutors rely too much on the defect of criminal case to collect clues,lighten the burden of proof prosecution main body,and the application of the the system of punitive damages in the judicial practice to provide legal basis.