A Study On The Crime Of Infringing Citizens’ Personal Information

Personal information is a link between individuals and society,and the collection and utilization of it is as old as its appearance.With the development of information technology,personal information has gradually become a new kind of resource.On the one hand,personal information brings great convenience to social activities as a medium of communication between people;on the other hand,it is also in constant risk of being violated because of great commercial value."It was the best of times,it was the worst of times".When personal information which carries people’s major legal interests is subject to malicious collection and use,it will damage their dignity,affect the peace of life and bring property loss,and more seriously lead to crime.Therefore,protecting personal information is a really unavoidable problem.China does not have a special law on the protection of personal information.The relevant provisions distribute in the civil,administrative and criminal laws.Facing the more and more serious violations,relying solely on civil and administrative means to protect personal information seems powerless and useless.In 2009 the Seventh Amendment to the Criminal Law of PRC was enacted that "selling,illegally providing personal information" and "illegally obtaining personal information" are two forbidden kinds of acts,which was the first protection from Criminal Law.In 2015 the Ninth Amendment to the Criminal Law of PRC increased the intensity of protection,such as expanding the special bodies to the generals and improving the intensity of the penalty,which was an another sword against the violation of citizens’personal information.However,legislation always inevitably lags behind the social reality when it was enacted.The revising of it is also a gradual process,the latest provisions still exists unsatisfactory aspects to be perfected.This paper analyzes the crime referring to the infringement of citizens’ personal information,combine the new changes about personal information as well as its’ protection in the Big Data Era,and learn the experience from other countries,so as to find out the measures to improve the protection of personal information by criminal means.In addition to the introduction,this paper is divided into three chapters.The first chapter is an overview of the crime referring to the infringement of citizens’personal information.It mainly introduces the scope of personal information,Based on the perspective of philosophy and information science,further introducing personal information in law field,and focusing on the present situation about the scope of personal information in criminal law in our country.In addition,this article expounds the reason why we need to protect personal information by criminal means,namely the reality that personal information indeed in serious infringement and the limitations to protect personal information by non-criminal means.There are three aspects of personal information in criminal law:Self-determination,Confidentiality and reward.The second chapter mainly studies the object,objective behaviors,special problems in subjective elements and the criteria about "serious circumstances" of the crime in-depth from the perspective of judicial determination.In detail,involving the objects,the author analyzes whether the information of foreigner,public figures,the dead and the fetus could be taken into consideration;the understanding of the selling and illegally providing and the relationship between them,and how to indentify illegally obtaining;the expediency to expand the subject of crime from special to general.Moreover,State organs can become the subject of this crime.According to the criminal law,negligence and purpose don’t belong to this crime.At last,the author researches the criteria about "serious circumstances" by the combination with judicial practice.The last chapter mainly refers to the new changes of personal information in the Big Data age,which makes it easy to obtain personal information while the personal information bearer higher and higher commercial value and infringement.Therefore,there must be incompatibility on protection by criminal law in operation.After analyzing the legislations of Civil Law and Common Law countries,the author then put forward the legislative proposals which refer to the scope of personal information,the illegal use of behavior,adding negligence and adjustment of penalty to perfect the protection of personal information in our country.