Surveillance Technologies and Human Rights: Reassessing Privacy and Life Protections in Pakistan (Analysing Risks under Articles 6 and 17 of ICCPR and the HRC’s 2024 Concluding Observations)
Abstract
The rapidly growing surveillance economy of telecommunication interception services, platform surveillance, biometric identification, and safe city infrastructures in Pakistan has far exceeded the rights protecting legislative framework and proper regulation in Pakistan. In a broader perspective of the implications of the current data protection mechanisms in Pakistan in the framework of the concept of privacy and the right to life in respect of Article 17 (privacy) and Article 6 (right to life) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), this article provides the posteriorizing of the privacy and life protection in this country with reference to the Concluding Observations of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) on Pakistan issued in 2024. It states that the main human rights danger is not so much more surveillance, but surveillance on the basis of indefinite legal permissions, insufficient ex-antes judicial perforations, little independent auditing, and shrouded technical constructions circumstances that not only permit invasions of privacy, but also augment the stakes harms, which involve patterns of intimidation, targeting, and the conditioning environment in general of forced removals. It is based on the constitutional guarantees of Pakistan, and the analysis critically on the judicial posture of Pakistan itself, with its proceedings in 2023-2024 on the subject of illegal phone tapping, and the Lawful Interception Management System (LIMS), where the judge becomes insistent on the concept of legality, due process, and constitutional accountability. The article suggests the pathway of reform of rights compatible: the reduction of legal foundations; restoration of judicial warrant, the rule; establishment of independent control and technical accountability; reinforcement of remedy and transparency; and adjustment of surveillance regulation to the HRC 2024 proposals, using Turabian notes bibliography style.
Keywords: Pakistan; privacy; surveillance; right to life; ICCPR; Article 17, Article 6; Human Rights Committee; LIMS; lawful interception; enforced disappearance; constitutional law.
