Hunton & Williams provide more details on the newly passed Chinese tort law:
Certain of its provisions relate, expressly or in a general sense, to personal information. These provisions can cause data users to incur liability to data subjects for the mishandling of personal information. In particular:
The law (at Articles 2 and 6) states a general principle that any person who infringes on and damages “civil rights and interests” of other persons shall assume tort liability. A right to privacy (隐私权) is included in the list of the protected “civil rights and interests.” (There is, however, no further elaboration on precisely what this right to privacy consists of.) Other “civil rights and interests” that are listed in the new law, and that may be related to privacy and data protection, include rights to health, name, reputation, honor and portrait.
The law establishes the right of an injured party to proceed against an employer if its employees cause damages to other persons in the course of carrying out work-related asks (at Article 34).
The law establishes the right of an injured party to proceed against an Internet service provider (“ISP”) that uses the Internet to infringe upon the civil rights and interests of another person, or that is aware that users are utilizing the ISP network to commit a tort and yet fails to take necessary measures (such as deletion, screening or disconnection) or fails to take necessary measures after receiving notice from an injured party and by this failure enlarges the damages (at Article 36).
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Read more in their January 2010 Client Alert (pdf).
Image credit: The Great Wall of China at Badaling, by Samxli. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.