Parents barred from peeking at kids' emails
- Source: Global Times
- [02:56 September 29 2009]
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By Zhou Xiaogang
A heated debate has erupted over a Hubei Province regulation that prohibits parents from spying on their children's personal correspondences.
Beginning October 1, parents will be forbidden to read the letters, emails and text messages of their kids under 18 years of age unless the minors give permission for their parents to snoop on their privacy.
Local legislators spent about 15 months drafting the regulation, which also bans parents from reading their kids' SMS messages and online chats.
"Some measures to protect a child's privacy go against the parents' custody rights," said Tao Hongkai, a legislative expert familiar with the regulation, during an interview Monday with the Changjiang Daily.
"The kids need to be under their parents' custody. If parents are not allowed to check the letters, diaries, SMS and other correspondence records of their childern, how could they perform their duties?" he asked.
The regulation, which was drafted under China's Law on the Protection of Minors, was controversial even among the committee members who drafted it.
"Some people suggested canceling the provisions concerning minors' privacy when it was submitted for a second discussion," said Liu Chunsheng, executive director of the Minors Rights Protection Center of Hubei.
Views on the regulation are mixed.
"I think we should have our own secrets. Our parents should let us grow up independently," Yin Jiaqi, 11 years old, told the Global Times Monday. Yin is a fifth-grade student at a primary school in Hubei.
"I don't have a cell phone," said his classmate Zhang Huan, 10 years old.
"The regulation won't bother me. If my parents buy a mobile for me, I won't let them check my text messages."
Some parents said they would not check their children's SMS as long as the children behave themselves.
"My son is 11 years old. He will go to junior high school next year," said 39-year-old Zheng Guanxin, Yin Jiaqi's mother. "Studying should be first for him," she told the Global Times Monday. "I guess I have to check his SMS if it seems he's meeting girls at school and acting secretly."
Six provinces including Hubei have introduced similar regulations to ensure implementation of the Law on Protection of Minors since it went into effect on June 1, 2007.
