BEIJING, Jan 3 — The cyber hunters who roam China's online space could soon become the hunted themselves. The Chinese legislature is deliberating a new law to curb the excesses of a growing trend here — the awkwardly-named “human flesh search engine”.
The first case of cyber hunting in China is believed to be in 2001, when a netizen posted a photo of a girl online, claiming that she was his girlfriend. Other netizens found out that the beauty was computer giant Microsoft's model Chen Ziyao and exposed the lie.
The government wants to crack down on those Internet users who hunt down individuals online and expose details of their personal lives. The draft law says the cyber hunters and the website service providers will be held responsible if they violate the privacy of others. And if victims ask for their personal information to be deleted, the online portals must comply.
This comes after a recent successful lawsuit by a victim against a cyber hunter and an online portal — signifying that the netizens who style themselves as some kind of cyber vigilantes could soon find themselves falling foul of the law.
In a landmark case a fortnight ago, a Beijing court ruled that Wang Fei's reputation had been damaged by a cyber manhunt. He lost his job and was harassed by strangers after his infidelity to his late wife, who committed suicide, was splashed online. His parents' home was vandalised and his photos, addresses and phone numbers had been made public.
The court ordered Zhang Leyi — a university classmate of Wang's wife who posted her diaries online and encouraged the manhunt — and the Internet host to pay Wang 5,000 yuan (RM2,500) and 3,000 yuan, respectively.
This case, which has been dubbed “The Death Blog”, was China's first known lawsuit against online vigilantism.
Professor Xiao Qiang, who is the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley, believes the case and the proposed new law, would have a positive impact on protecting citizens' privacy.
Du Peiyuan, who is in charge of social issues at the popular Mop.com, agrees. He told The Straits Times his website would be more stringent with the posts there. But neither him nor Prof Xiao believes that the new law would end the “human flesh search” phenomenon.
“This kind of 'distributive investigative behaviour' will continue as long as the Internet is a public, interactive social space, participated in by a great number of netizens,” said Xiao.
That number is growing. Government figures show the number of netizens in China as at November last year was 290 million — ranked first in the world. There are more than 2.1 million websites and more than 100 million blogs in China. This translates into a potent force, capable of bringing down not just common folk, but government officials too.
In the last month alone, a Nanjing official was sacked after photos posted online showed him wearing a Vacheron Constantin Swiss watch — which retails at about 100,000 yuan — and smoking luxury brand cigarettes. Six local government officials from central Hunan province were also given
the boot after pictures of them dozing off at an official meeting were circulated on the Internet.
Some commentators are calling the trend a sort of “grassroots democracy”.
But while Beijing-based analyst Russell Leigh Moses agrees that these search engines “show how much passion and purpose bubble below the surface in China”, he adds that unbridled involvement by the masses can easily result in tragedy.
“The proposed law is a small step for those who want more of a role for citizens here but also wish to restrain them from mass, unsupervised action.” — Straits Times Singapore
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
