The Guangzhou Internet Court has recently announced a case of buying and selling citizens' personal information. The people involved used artificial intelligence to generate videos from facial photos and fake facial recognition certifications to make illegal profits.

In addition to investigating the criminal liability of those involved, the procuratorate filed a personal information protection civil public interest lawsuit with the court on the grounds that the behavior of the four defendants infringed on social and public interests. This is the country's first civil public interest litigation case involving "face recognition".

To curb such criminal activities, criminal penalties alone are not enough. After the procuratorate filed a civil public interest lawsuit, the court ordered the four defendants to cancel the internet accounts used for the infringement, dissolve or withdraw from the communication groups used to teach criminal methods, pay more than 100,000 yuan ($14,042) in public welfare damages, and publicly apologize for what they did.

In this case, the criminals deleted a large amount of information and transaction records, making it impossible to verify the victims. When the rights and interests of many individuals are infringed upon like this, the procuratorate must step forward to initiate litigation. Moreover, the procuratorial organ, which already knows the facts of the case, is the ideal party to file civil public interest litigation.

In recent years, the procuratorial organs having initiated public interest litigation as a representative for public interests have achieved good results in many fields such as ecological, environmental and resource protection, and consumer rights protection.

The field of personal information protection is the "hardest hit area" for infringement of citizens' rights and interests. To better protect the security of people's personal information, more procuratorial agencies need to fulfill their duties to safeguard public interests.