The Public Law Construction of Government Agencies’Obligations to Disclose When Handling Personal Information in the Digital Age

The protection of personal information plays an extremely important role in the construction of digital government.The duty to inform is a prerequisite core obligation that the government should fulfill in processing personal information,a concrete expression of the right to self-determination of personal information,and a prerequisite for the right to protection of personal information that works as a fundamental right to defense the intrusion from the government,as well as a procedural regulatory tool to restrain the government’s information power and prevent the risk of infringement.As the rules on the processing of personal information and the duty to inform have both the nature of public law,the government’s processing of personal information is also public law in nature,especially because of the constitutional value and power control function of the duty to inform,the construction of a system for the duty to inform cannot be copied from the rules applicable to private subjects,but should be tailored to the public law characteristics of the government’s processing of personal information,overcoming the shortcomings of the current rough and fragmented legislation,and set up a systematic regulation based on the public law in term of the legal subject,procedure,content,consequences of obligation violations and legal protection.