LAHORE: There is need to break the spiral of silence on cyber harassment and discuss the issue on different forums to raise awareness about digital rights, says digital rights activist Nighat Dad.

At a workshop on digital rights awareness and cyber harassment at Arbisoft, she explained harassment in physical and online worlds.

“While we can control and respond to harassment in the physical world, monitoring harassment in the cyber world is a difficult task,” she said.

She said using slander, explicit content online was form of cyber harassment. The perpetrator can be punished with five years of imprisonment or a fine of Rs5 million or both as the laws state today.

“Once anything goes online, it can never go away,” said Ms Dad, adding that we could control our data to an extent by controlling the privacy settings online, but one had to be cautious about the kind of data being shared online. “But it’s just a limited control. For example, even if you delete all your content and account on Facebook, the social networking site would still have your data saved in the cloud. Basically, once we agree to terms and conditions while making a social media account or installing an app, we are giving away the copyrights of our data.”

She said it was the responsibility of technology companies to highlight digital rights awareness.

She asked the participants if they understood the concept of consent. She explained using another person’s data, such as posting someone’s picture without their consent was a criminal act under the ‘Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016”.

Published in Dawn December 22nd, 2016