DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN PAKISTAN: A LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Right to privacy is identified as a human right that needs to be protected. This research was aimed to explore the ways in which constitutional framework of Pakistan defines and safeguards the right to privacy in this digital era. Moreover, the study also evaluated the degree to which existing Pakistani laws on digital surveillance aligned with constitutional provisions of privacy. In addition to this, the study also analysed the ways in which linguistic constructions in legal and policy texts influenced the legal understanding and justification of the right to privacy. The study used a mixed-method approach as both doctrinal legal analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used by the researchers. Moreover, the researchers assessed constitutional provisions, statutes, judicial decisions along with national cybersecurity policies. The findings of the study revealed that the constitution recognised privacy, but this was also undermined by its own conditional phrasing and same was observed with other documents that were used for the analysis. In addition to this, it was also found that the linguistic framework of all these policy documents collectively constructs an ideology. This study played a vital role in studying law as well as overall discussion of digital rights and governance within Pakistan