Is it illegal for a teacher to film students with his cell phone?

It is not illegal for teachers to take photos of students.

It is not illegal to take photos normally, but maliciously damaging, defiling, or besmirching a citizen's portrait, or using a citizen's portrait for personal attack, etc., is an infringement of portrait rights. In law, portrait is a kind of personality interest generated by citizens based on their spiritual activities.

A portrait is a thing in civil law. Because the portrait must be separated from the person, fixed on a certain material carrier, and can be controlled by human beings, and has a certain value, the portrait is a thing under civil law. For example, a photo is a kind of thing. Portraits are the reflection of citizens’ personality interests. In addition to protecting portraits, the law also provides special protection for portraits, because portraits are a reflection of citizens’ personal interests.

The following situations can be considered an invasion of privacy:

1. Publicizing a citizen’s name, portrait, address and phone number without their permission.

2 Illegal intrusion and search of other people’s homes, or other ways of destroying the peace of other people’s homes.

3 Illegal stalking of others, surveillance of other people’s residences, installation of eavesdropping equipment, private filming of other people’s private lives, and snooping on other people’s indoor situations.

4 Illegally spy on other people’s property status or publish their property status without their permission.

5 Open other people’s letters privately, peek into other people’s diaries, spy on the contents of other people’s private documents, and make them public.

6 Investigate and spy on other people’s social relationships and make them illegally public.

7 Interfering with other people’s sexual life or investigating or publishing them.

8. Announce other people’s extramarital sex life to the public.

9 Leak citizens’ personal materials or make them public or expand the scope of disclosure.

10 Collect purely personal information that citizens are unwilling to disclose to the public.

Legal basis:

Civil Code

Article 1019

No organization or individual may vilify , deface, or use information technology means to forge and infringe on the portrait rights of others. Without the consent of the portrait right holder, the portrait of the portrait right holder shall not be produced, used, or disclosed, unless otherwise provided by law.

"The People's Republic of China and the Civil Code"

Article 1018

Natural persons enjoy the right of portrait and have the right to produce and use in accordance with the law , disclose or allow others to use your likeness. A portrait is an identifiable external image of a specific natural person reflected on a certain carrier through images, sculptures, paintings, etc.