Strengthening and improving legislation for the protection of
individual privacy in Internet activities was the main focus of the
Fourth Annual Forum on City Informatization in the Asia-Pacific
Region (CIAPR IV), held earlier this month in Shanghai.
Such measures are vital for the Internet industry to develop
rapidly and soundly, and to coordinate it with the development of
the Chinese market economy, attending experts agreed.
Professors Zhang Xinbao of Renmin University of China
and Mei Shaozu of the University of Science and Technology Beijing,
and Dr. Zhou Hanhua of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
delivered reports on the challenges posed by Internet development,
the protection of rights to privacy and the need for related
legislation.
Illegal collection, misuse and trading of individual data are
rampant in China, they said, and netizens' awareness of the need
for self-protection is low. For example, anyone applying for an
e-mail address is required to fill in an application form, and few
users question how that information is used.
Zhang Xinbao conducted an investigation that showed that the
Chinese versions of main portal websites and commercial websites
made their own policies on privacy protection. There are no
standards or regulations on which they base these policies,
although some do refer to international practice. Still, said
Zhang, "they did much better than the government websites in this
regard."
Different language versions, even within a single website,
employ different privacy protection policies, noted Zhang. The
level of privacy protection in the English versions is somewhat
higher than that of the Chinese versions.
Currently, the protection of Internet privacy rights mainly
depends on industry self-discipline, which all software producers
and Internet service providers (ISPs) should utilize, said the
experts.
Website operators with low awareness of privacy protection must
be made to understand their responsibilities under both civil and
criminal law, they agreed. An operator could be charged with
violating privacy rights directly or indirectly, such as by
publishing information that infringes on those rights.
Moreover, there are many Internet technologies easily used by
hackers or by the websites themselves that pose a threat to privacy
rights. Typical examples of this "spyware" are cookies and Trojan
horse software.
A cookie is a simple program used by almost all websites to
record users' web activities. The experts suggested that laws
should be enacted requiring that websites disclose their use of
cookies and restricting their uses. Trojan horses are
security-breaking programs disguised as something benign: for
example, a user downloads a file that he or she desires, but when
the file is opened it unleashes a dangerous program that erases the
computer's hard drive, sends the user's credit card numbers and
passwords to a stranger or lets the stranger hijack the computer
for illegal uses. Software like this, said the experts, should be
strictly forbidden.
At present, to promote growth of the Internet industry amid an
internationally competitive environment, Chinese lawmakers have
shown a comparatively tolerant attitude toward Internet privacy
protection. Service providers and operators will not be punished
unless they make a very serious "mistake." But experts at the forum
expressed their hope that China will learn from the experience of
foreign countries in this regard and improve the protection of
Internet privacy rights.
 |
In 1986, for example, the US Congress passed the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act, which enumerates situations, exceptions
and responsibilities with regard to illegally obtaining, accessing
and divulging communications information and other matters of
individual privacy. In October 1997, the Clinton administration
issued a report entitled "Framework for Global Electronic
Commerce," in which protection privacy, particularly that of
children, was set out as a basic principle. It endorsed private
efforts to create self-regulatory privacy protection systems,
stating that consumers should be informed of what is being
collected and how it will be used so they can bar or limit reuse of
personal data.
In 1999, the European Union issued the "Guidelines for the
Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Collection and
Processing of Personal Data on Information Highways" and the
"Recommendation on Invisible and Automatic Processing of Personal
Data on the Internet Performed by Software and Hardware." These
measures provided users and operators/service providers with the
principles for protection of privacy and formed the basis for a
unified system of enforcement.
(China.org.cn by Li Jingrong, May 28, 2004)
