Guiding Case No.192 Case of Civil Public Interest Litigation Collateral to Criminal Proceedings concerning Infringement of Citizens' Personal Information by Li Kaixiang (Adopted through discussion by the Adjudication Committee of the Supreme People's Court and issued on December 26, 2022) Keywords: Criminal/Infringement of Citizens' Personal Information/Civil Public Interest Litigation Collateral to Criminal Proceedings/Face Recognition/Face Information Key Points of the Judgment Face information processed by face recognition technologies and face information generated based on face recognition technologies are highly identifiable and able to determine the identity or reflect the activities of a specific natural person alone or in combination with other information, and belong to citizens' personal information under the Criminal Law. If, without the consent of a citizen and without the lawful reasons for processing personal information as stipulated in the Personal Information Protection Law such as the authorization of laws and the relevant departments, the actor steals or illegally obtains the said information by utilizing software programs or other means with serious circumstances, he/she shall be convicted and punished in accordance with Item 4, Paragraph 1 of Article 5 of the Interpretations of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases Involving Infringement of Citizens' Personal Information. Pertinent Legal Provisions Article 253-1 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China Basic Facts From June to September 2020, the defendant, Li Kaixiang, produced mobile phone "hacker software" with the function of illegally stealing photos from the installer's album, packaged it into an "APK installation package" for the Android mobile terminal, posted it for sale in the "Ancient Tea Horse Road" forum on the dark web, and released it as "face score detection" software in the "Mustard Forum"" (later renamed as "Fast Cat Community") for free download by visitors. When a user downloads and installs the "face score detection" software, the "face score detection" software automatically obtains photos from the mobile phone album in the background, and automatically uploads them to the background of the Tencent Cloud server set up by the defendant. The software stole a total of 1,751 photos from the installer's album, containing more than 100 pieces of citizens' personal information such as face information, natural person's name, ID card number, contact information and home address. In September 2020, the defendant, Li Kaixiang, saw the post of "hacker data" on the "Ancient Tea Horse Road" forum on the dark web, and then used part of the proceeds from the sale of the "APK installation package" on the dark web to buy and download the data titled "social worker database", and transferred it to the "MEGA" web disk that, after his/her own check, contained real personal information. In February 2021, knowing that the "social worker database" contained household registration information, QQ account registration information, JD.com account registration information, vehicle owner information, and loan information, etc., the defendant, Li Kaixiang, still shared the link to the web disk to the QQ group "Exchanges of Cuihu Manor Owners" where he/she acted as the administrator for free download by group members. After the removal of invalid data, consolidation and deletion of repetition, the "social worker database" was identified as containing more than 81 million pieces of various types of citizens’ personal information. The People's Procuratorate of Fengxian District, Shanghai Municipality filed civil public interest litigation 1