Cyber manhunters: social ethic guardians or privacy violators?

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• [12:42 April 20 2009]
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Wang said that after his address and phone number appeared on Tianya.com and a memorial site for Jiang he began receiving harassing calls. In an interview published on the China News website, Wang said he was “fed up being tortured” and that he “couldn’t lead a normal life”.

After three trials, the Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing ordered Daqi.com and the memorial website to compensate Wang for the emotional damage they had caused. The court’s decision sparked a new round of debate.

Liu Deliang, a professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said in his blog that the judges “ignored the public interest when defining people’s right to privacy”.

Zhou Xiaozheng, president of the Legal Sociology Institute of Renmin University of China, said public officials should be subject to their own set of rules.

In an interview with Guangzhou Daily he said: “It would undermine the people’s right to know if public scandals are hidden due to privacy concerns.”

In January, the government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, published its “Regulations on Protecting Computer Information Systems”, part of which makes cyber manhunts illegal. A subsequent poll conducted via the website of the People’s Daily showed that 88 percent of people opposed the ban.