Digital Rights Foundation conducts workshop on privacy rights in Lahore

LAHORE - Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) on Friday conducted a workshop titled “Workshop on Privacy Rights” in Lahore.

The workshop discussed the state of privacy rights in Pakistan in light of cyber law and its implementation. The goal of this focus group discussion was to start a debate about the law, its significance and shortcomings in terms of implementation. Furthermore, Digital Rights Foundation talked about privacy rights and the need for a data protection law in light of best practices abroad.

Nighat Dad, the Executive Director of DRF, said that “we as consumers give up a lot of our data online voluntarily. It is also important to problematize the notion of consent: sometimes users read but don’t understand terms and conditions of social media and applications that they use.”

The aim of the conference was to make privacy and digital rights more accessible and relevant. The workshop participants were divided around themes of media regulation (both traditional and social media), SAFE City initiatives and telecommunications policies.

The participants put forward several suggestions regarding standard operating procedures, right to know how information is used and demanded transparency from the government. The participants pointed out that social media and blogs are unregulated, and they concluded that there needs to be some SOPs around media ethics and privacy.

Digital Rights Foundation is a registered research-based advocacy non-governmental organisation in Pakistan. Founded by Nighat Dad in 2012, DRF focuses on ICTs to support human rights, inclusiveness, democratic processes, and digital governance. DRF works on issues of online free speech, privacy, data protection and online violence against women.