Authored by Yingying Zhu

March 2021

Each of us leaves a lasting digital footprint on the internet and would expect businesses that we are dealing with could treat our digital privacy with reasonable care and consideration. Can users have a reasonable privacy expectation in the friends made and the books read online? The Beijing Internet Court in its recently released WeRead judgment holds that, friends list and reading data are not eligible for privacy protection in the case under dispute but nevertheless entitled to protection as personal information.

Background

The judgment is in relation to a dispute between an individual, Huang, a user of a book reading app named WeRead, and the digital giant, Tencent, the operator of the most successful social media in China, WeChat, and its sister app WeRead. The WeRead app wishes to set up an app-based reading community, where people who enjoy reading can read & connect. The plaintiff Huang was complaining that WeRead sneaked away her friends list from WeChat and then automatically turned those who are also subscribers of WeRead as her connections. Huang was also complaining that the information regarding the books she read and how she felt about the reading was widely open to all her connections without her permission while she intended to keep such information private. In its defense, the defendant Tencent alleged that users’ friends list and reading data were obtained with a preapproval from users therefore it should not be held liable for the utilization of the data.

Decision of Beijing Internet Court[1]

The Beijing Internet Court (hereinafter the “BIC”), the Court of First Instance, decides that Huang’s friends list and reading data shall not be categorized as private information, hence not eligible for privacy protection.

To define what constitutes private information, the BIC’s reasoning is based on the classification of the following three layers of personal information:

1.     personal information reasonably recognized by the society as private information, such as one’s sextual orientation, sex life, history of disease and unreleased criminal records, etc.

2.     personal information on which one may hold a defensive expectation or a utilization expectation; and

3.     general information that has no traits of privacy at all.

The BIC holds, because one’s friends list and reading data do not constitute private information as listed in layer 1 in the above classification, Tencent is not liable for invasion of the plaintiff’s privacy.

The BIC goes on to reason that one’s friends list and reading data shall be classified under layer 2 in the above classification, where the information is considered personal but not private and therefore the emphasis of protection is to give the data subject a right to decide whether to hide or to use such information.

The BIC further holds that in this case the plaintiff did not get the chance to decide how to deal with her personal information, because Tencent failed to give proper and transparent notices to the plaintiff and failed to obtain her affirmative consent before utilizing the information under dispute. The BIC then decides that Tencent should be held liable for violation of the plaintiff’s legitimate interests in her personal information. The BIC’s decision is majorly based on Article 43 of the Cybersecurity Law of China. [2]

Discussion

1.    What is Privacy?

According to Eric Hughes, an American mathematician, computer programmer, and cypherpunk, “Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” [3] Broadly speaking, privacy is the right to be let alone, or freedom from interference or intrusion. Information privacy is the right to have some control over how your personal information is collected and used.[4]

The Civil Code of China (2021) defines privacy as peace in a person’s private life and the private space, private activities and private information that a person does not intend for others to know.[5]

As a governing law, the Civil Code’s definition of privacy is vague. As we know, privacy varies greatly from person to person: while one person may be comfortable with showing his or her diet recipe online, another person may be embarrassed to let others know how little (or how much) he or she eats over a meal. Similarly, while one person may be at ease with disclosing many details of his or her personal life to online social connections, another person may feel ashamed of posting anything personal on the internet. So exactly what kind of privacy does the Civil Code protect? Some guidance from a concurring opinion in a US Supreme Court decision might shed some light on this.

2.    Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

To define the right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment, [6]  the US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, in his concurring opinion in Katz, [7]  formulated a “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. The test has two prongs:

1)     the person must exhibit an “actual (subjective) expectation of privacy”; and

2)     society recognizes the expectation as “reasonable.”

The Katz “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, while particularly useful in terms of defining privacy, also provokes further questions: what is reasonable? where to draw the line between “reasonable” expectation and expectation that is “unreasonable”? These questions matter hugely in today’s digital world, because every time a user creates a new account at an online platform, the user provides information with personal details, including name, birthdate, geographic location, and personal interests, etc. Users are entitled to know if they can have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in such information and if such expectation could be respected by the platform.

3.    Exceptions to the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

There are several recognized exceptions to the reasonable expectation of privacy, such as the Third-Party Doctrine, which means once an individual invests a third party with information, and voluntarily agrees to share information with a recipient, the individual loses any reasonable expectation of privacy in that information, [8] and the Voluntary consent Doctrine, which means individuals lose a reasonable expectation of privacy when they consent to a search of private information.[9]Other exceptions include the following: unlawful information is not protectable by the law and therefore there should be no reasonable expectation of privacy,[10] and public disclosure of private information will cause forfeiture of any reasonable expectation of privacy.[11]

4.    Where did the Court draw the Line?

The BIC obviously referenced the Katz test by reasoning that “the privateness in the information that one does not intend to disclose depends on a subjective intent, however, such subjective intent shall be reasonably recognized by the society.”

Then the BIC made the point that the information about one’s social relationship could only invoke reasonable expectation of privacy under the following circumstances: the relationship between the data subject and certain connections would be too intimate to let others know, or the disclosure of some social relationship would negatively affect the data subject’s social image.

With respect to the book reading data, the BIC made another similar point that one could only have reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s reading data if certain reading contents fall into some private and secret information region or the reading data, when generated at certain amounts, would reflect negatively on the data subject.

Then the BIC commented that the plaintiff’s online social relationship, i.e., the listed friends, is being identified by open-ID, profile and nickname, which should not show the real social relationship or the degree of intimacy between the plaintiff and her social connections. The BIC also went through the contents of the plaintiff’s reading data and found that neither of the two books displayed to her connections would cause any damage to the plaintiff’s social image. The plaintiff’s reading data therefore should not be categorized as private information, hence no reasonable privacy expectation in the data.

In a nutshell, the BIC was defining “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the digital world based on the content of certain information. If a piece of information contains nothing intimate or cannot reflect negatively on the data subject, then the data subject should not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the information. The content-based approach is how the BIC drew the line between privacy and non-privacy related information.

5.    Content-based Approach is not Fair

The BIC’s views on this issue are deeply disturbing. Back to the definition of privacy, broadly speaking, privacy is the right to be “let alone”. It means when a person walks into an isolated space, the person could expect to be in a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people,[12] as long as nothing illegal is ongoing under the roof. By applying the Katz test, this person has a reasonable expectation of privacy because the person demonstrates a subjective expectation of privacy by “walking into the isolated space”, which is well recognized by the society as reasonable.  Furthermore, the person’s act does not fall into any of the aforesaid exceptions.

 In solitude, a decent citizen could expect the same degree of privacy as much as anyone would. The right to privacy does not depend on whether something shameful is being conducted inside that isolated space. The right to privacy does not depend on the activity happened inside. Instead, it depends on whether one’s demonstration of intent to be let alone could be accepted as reasonable by the society. However, under the content-based approach, a decent citizen would have less expectation of privacy than someone who conducts shameful behaviour in solitude, and this approach apparently leads to unfair results.

Here comes the digital world version of the above scenario. When an individual, like the plaintiff Huang, subscribes to open an account at an online platform, like WeRead, and secures it with a password, this would create an isolated space where this person could expect digital privacy. By applying the Katz test, this individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy as he or she demonstrates a subjective expectation of privacy by “creating a password-secured account”, which is well recognized by the society as reasonable.  Likewise, the person’s act does not fall into any of the aforesaid exceptions.

This person is fully entitled to assert a digital privacy right to be “let alone”. One can choose not to have any improper friends, and not to read any obscene books, but can still enjoy full privacy rights over one’s personal information. It literally means that being a decent netizen should not compromise one’s digital privacy rights. The content of the information stored in a password-secured account, if it is nothing unlawful, should not dictate if and how the person would enjoy the right to privacy.

The above scenario shows that the content-based approach taken by the BIC is not fair because it makes users’ digital privacy rights conditional on the content of personal information, i.e., if the information includes any embarrassing content or not. This approach leads to the unfair conclusion that being a decent netizen, one has nothing shameful to hide and therefore would not have reasonable expectation of digital privacy.

Conclusion

With the storage and processing of exabytes of data, social media users’ concerns about their privacy have been on the rise in recent years. Incidents of illegal use of data and data breaches have alerted many users and caused them to reconsider their interaction with social media and the security of their personal data.

The disputes caused by unauthorized use of personal information over the internet have spiked in the privacy law landscape. The Beijing Internet Court’s present decision, which echoes with the same court’s decision on the “Dou Yin (Tik Tok Chinese version) collection of personal information” case, [13] is among the first few decisions made by Chinese courts on this controversial issue. Significantly, the decision might impact ongoing litigation stemming from similar disputes. Other courts around the country might follow suit. Therefore, it is imperative to have a more clear and fair approach towards defining reasonable digital privacy expectation.

In the era of big data, defining privacy is under pressure in the digital world. As Bill Gates put it: “whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules — not just for governments but for private companies.” [14]

[1] Beijing Internet Court, (2019) Jing 0491Min Chu Zi No. 16142.

[2]  China Cybersecurity Law, Article 43, provides, “Where an individual finds that any network operator collects or uses his or her personal information in violation of the provisions of any law, administrative regulation or the agreement of both parties, the individual shall be entitled to request the network operator to delete his or her personal information. If the individual finds that his or her personal information collected or stored by the network operator has any error, he or she shall be entitled to request the network operator to make corrections. The network operator shall take measures to delete the information or correct the error.”

[3] Eric Hughes, The Cypherpunk Manifesto (1993), see https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html.

[4] See https://iapp.org/about/what-is-privacy/.

[5] Article 1032, China Civil Code (2021).

[6] The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, ratified on December 15, 1791, protects the right of people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

[7]See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Concurring opinion written by Justice Harlan.

[8] See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979).

[9] See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

[10] See https://civillaw.com.cn/bo/t/?id=37410.

[11] Ibid.

[12] See https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/privacy-data-protection-towards-elderly/23405.

[13]See Beijing Internet Court, (2019) Jing 0491Min Chu Zi No. 6694.

[14] See https://www.oipc.bc.ca/news/quote-of-the-day-bill-gates/.