我国自五四宪法以来就一直重视公民的通信秘密权保护，八二宪法基于特殊的制宪背景，同样将通信秘密权视作宪法上的一项基本权利。宪法第40条详细规定了侵犯公民通信秘密权的主体、事由以及程序，通信秘密受到来自宪法的高强度保护。但极其具体的宪法规范却带来了理论以及实践上的争议：在立法层面，法律与宪法之间存在内容或语义冲突；在实践层面，国家公权力机关能否调取必要的通话信息，对公民通信秘密进行限制，同样是待解决的问题。

从通信秘密权的法律性质来说，其兼具隐私权与言论自由的内涵，结合我国宪法通信秘密权条款的诞生背景，宜将其视为一项单独的基本权利。宪法第40条构成加重法律保留，但并不意味着对通信秘密权进行完全的、绝对的保护，而仍应受到其他权利的限制，其他限制同样彰显着宪法所意欲维护的宪法秩序与宪法价值。具体来说，除第一章导论、第六章结语外，本文主要分为四个章节：

第二章，主要介绍了通信方式在数字时代的多样化，而非仅指书信交流。还就通信秘密权的性质进行分析，并说明通信秘密权与隐私权、个人信息权的关系。

第三章，主要梳理了我国有关公民通信秘密权保护的规范，指出《宪法》第40条构成加重宪法保留。同时，分析保护或限制公民通信秘密权规范之间的冲突，以及所造成的实践争议。

第四章，重点介绍美国与欧洲如何实现公民通信秘密权保护。其中，美国宪法第四修正案将通信秘密视为一种隐私利益，并通过判例法确立了“物理侵入”规则和“合理隐私期待”规则，同时隐私权的行使需受“第三方准则”约束。在欧洲法视角下，通信秘密权是一项独立的宪法权利，依据《欧洲人权公约》第8条第2款之规定，可对通信秘密权予以适当限制。在美国与欧洲法律实践中，还逐渐发展出了对于通信秘密保护的“二分法”，即通信内容信息与非内容信息的分层保护，通信元数据作为在通信活动中产生的一种结构性数据，可将其视为通信非内容信息保护。

第五章，介绍了保护公民通信秘密权之路径。针对前文提及的法律冲突与实践争议，本文建议采宪法解释而非修改宪法的方式解决问题，通过权衡不同的宪法价值，实现对通信秘密权的保护与限制。无救济则无权利，保障公民通信秘密权遭受侵犯时的权利救济。对于一般法律规定涉及公民通信秘密权的，需接受合宪性审查，包括形式合宪以及实质合宪。

Since the Constitution of 1954, China has always attached importance to the protection of citizens' right to privacy of communication, and the Constitution of 1982, based on a special constitutional background, also regards the right to privacy of communication as a fundamental right in the Constitution. Article 40 of the Constitution details the subjects, causes and procedures for infringement of citizens' right to privacy of correspondence, which is protected by a high degree of intensity from the Constitution. However, the extremely specific constitutional norms have brought about theoretical as well as practical controversies: at the legislative level, there is a conflict of content between the law and the constitution; at the practical level, whether the state public authorities can access the necessary call information to limit the secrecy of citizens' communications is also a problem to be solved.

In terms of the legal nature of the right to privacy of correspondence, it combines the connotation of the right to privacy and freedom of expression, combined with the context of the birth of the right to privacy of correspondence in our Constitution, it is appropriate to consider it as a separate fundamental right. Article 40 of the Constitution constitutes an aggravated legal reservation. However, it does not mean that the right to privacy of correspondence is completely and absolutely protected, but should still be subject to other restrictions on other rights, which also manifest the constitutional order and constitutional values that the Constitution intends to uphold. Specifically, apart from Chapter I, Introduction, and Chapter VI, Conclusion, the paper is divided into four main chapters:

Chapter 2, focuses on the diversity of modes of communication in the digital age, rather than referring only to the exchange of letters. It also provides an analysis of the nature of the right to secrecy of communication, and explains the relationship between the right to secrecy of communication and the right to privacy and personal information.

Chapter 3, focuses on sorting out the norms concerning the protection of citizens' right to secrecy of communication in China, pointing out that Article 40 of the Constitution constitutes a full constitutional reservation. At the same time, it analyses the conflicts between norms protecting or restricting the right to the secrecy of citizens' communications, and the resulting disputes in practice.

Chapter 4, focuses on how the protection of the right to the secrecy of citizens' communications has been achieved in the United States and Europe. In particular, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution considers the secrecy of communications as a privacy interest, and establishes through case law the rules of "physical intrusion" and "reasonable expectation of privacy", while the exercise of the right to privacy is subject to the "third party The European Court of Human Rights has established the rules of "physical intrusion" and "reasonable expectation of privacy" through case law, while the exercise of the right to privacy is subject to the "third party norm". Under European law, the right to privacy of correspondence is a separate constitutional right, which may also be appropriately limited under Article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In US and European legal practice, a "dichotomy" has also evolved in relation to the secrecy of communications, i.e. a hierarchy of protection between the content and non-content information of communications, with communications metadata, as a form of structural data generated in the course of communications activities, being protected as non-content information of communications.

In Chapter 5, the path to protecting citizens' right to privacy of communication is presented. In response to the aforementioned legal conflicts and practical disputes, this paper suggests that constitutional interpretation, rather than constitutional amendment, should be adopted to solve the problem, and that the protection and restriction of the right to privacy of communication should be achieved by weighing the different constitutional values. For general legal provisions involving citizens' right to privacy of communication, they are subject to constitutional review, including formal and substantive constitutionality. Finally, no right is no remedy, to protect the citizens' right to privacy of communication is violated by the right to remedy.