SHENZHEN will enact laws to protect personal information, following a government meeting.
The city government would authorize the Shenzhen Lawyers Association to draft a regulation on the protection of personal information, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.
It will be the first time the city government has commissioned a professional organization to draft legislation.
The draft will clarify the definition of personal information and detail the principles of collecting and handling the information.
In addition, the protection of personal information of public figures and children would be highlighted in the draft, the paper said.
The Shenzhen Lawyers Association has established a research and drafting team involving six veteran lawyers who will consult with institutions such as banks, Internet operators, courts and real estate enterprises.
A preliminary draft is expected to be completed by the end of March next year.
The government decision comes on the heels of three recent occasions when the personal information of more than 10,000 residents was posted on the Internet.
The posted personal information included names, addresses and mobile phone numbers.
Police have detained a man who posted online the personal information of about 3,000 homeowners in an upmarket residential property in Futian District.
The man, identified only by his surname Lan, admitted uploading the personal information to Baidu.com, a domestic search engine, in November, to gain Baidu Money, virtual money used to purchase gaming services on the Web site, police said.
Lan, a real estate agent for Shenzhen Shihua Real Estate Co. Ltd., said he collected the information at work. I needed Baidu Money to download some software from the Internet. The more information I could provide on the Internet, the more Baidu Money I could get, so I uploaded all the information to the Internet, Lan said.
In the latest case, the personal information of more than 1,400 reported multimillionaires in Shenzhen was uploaded to Baidu.com on Dec. 8. It had been downloaded 129 times by Monday, the Daily Sunshine reported yesterday.
(Martin Li)
