On March 12, a Beijing court sentenced four men to prison terms ranging from seven to eight months for running an illegal private investigation service. They also received fines totalling 300,000 yuan (about $US44,000). The judge explained that the men, all former farmers from Liaoning province with middle-school educations, had illegally profited from violating the privacy and property rights of others.
When the men were arrested in September 2009, police found cameras, telescopes, a tracking device, a “secret filming device” and a watch with a hidden camera, among other tools of the trade. One person who had hired the men as private investigators testified that he had paid them 215,950 yuan (about $US32,000) to find personal information such as marital status, family background, assets and bank accounts on a person of interest.
In October 2009, when Premier Wen Jiabao signed a new law regulating private security services in China, STRATFOR took a look at this related field and explored the legal and business hurdles of private firms offering services similar to those provided by police. While tightening regulatory scrutiny and raising the threshold of entry, the new law was also intended to create more of an open market, one without the involvement of state security organs. But the new law has not been enforced in very many places – indeed, it doesn’t even specify a penalty. It is effectively optional at the local level, where Public Security Bureaus don’t really have the resources to enforce it.
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