Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation has drafted the Interim Rules on Information Disclosure of Complaints about Market Supervision and Administration (Draft for Public Comments) and solicited public comments. Biology and Science Ethics Committee (BASE) of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) actively responded to the call and put forward the following suggestions.

[Proposed content]

Concerning “Article 8 - Contents for Announcement: Market supervision departments publicize the complaints accepted and completed in accordance with the law, the specific information includes: (a) the complainant's surname and the last four digits of his or her telephone number.”,. CBCGDF suggests that this rule should be cancelled. It is believed that whistleblowers should be anonymized and should not be publicly dragged by their own private information. Whistleblowers’ information can be treated with a string of unique symbols or numbers to be used in publicity.

In the era of big data, the complainant's surname and the last four digits of the phone number are enough to locate a person's identity. Disclosure of such data could result in reprisals or even life-threatening consequences for the complainant. Therefore, BASE proposes to remove this paragraph to ensure that the "whistleblower" system can operate normally to effectively protect the personal information and safety of complainants.

Original Chinese Article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OWjdX4Tgd3pmoyWVGqfP-Q

Translator: Tommy

Checked by Victoria

Editor: Tommy

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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