Recently, a seminar titled “Analyzing the Potential Gaps of the Draft Data Protection Act” was held at the Conference Room, Department of Law, University of Dhaka.
Dr. Shahnaz Huda, Director, The Centre for Advanced Legal Studies, Department of Law, University of Dhaka Chaired and moderated the Seminar. Dr. Shima Zaman, Dean, Department of Law, University of Dhaka delivered the Opening Remarks. Ms. Salwa Tabassum of Bangladesh Legal Aid Service Trust (BLAST) delivered the Keynote presentation.
Barrister Hamidul Mishbah, Founder of Bangladesh IP Forum, and Senior Advocate Barrister Sara Hossain were the Key Discussants and Speakers. Notable Professors of law from the Dhaka University, lawyers and law students were present at the Seminar, which was jointly organized by BLAST and Centre for Advanced Legal Studies, Department of Law.
In the Seminar the Discussants and Speakers discussed the role and importance of the proposed Data Protection Law for ensuring citizens’ privacy rights and right to protection of data.
Barrister Hamidul Mishbah, Founder of Bangladesh IP Forum, in his speech stated that according to Article 43 (B) of the Constitution of Bangladesh, every citizen has the right to protect his or her privacy. Right to Privacy is a Constitutional Right, which is directly connected to the right to protection of personal data. State has an obligation to ensure that citizens privacy and right to protect data are protected. Through analyzing citizens or user created data in compliance with data protection rights, government can come up with new and innovative services for its citizens. Besides, analyzing user generated data will allow government to introduce new policies and implement them quickly in an efficient and cost-effective manner, which is in fact the aim and objective of SMART Bangladesh.
Therefore, the role and importance of Personal Data Protection Law is enormous. However, the legal framework proposed in the Draft Data Protection Act does not seem to be very strong and convincing, so far, the protection of personal data and privacy regime is concerned. This is an area of concern, and leaves us with doubt whether the proposed law, if enacted in the current form, would be able to protect our privacy and data protection rights adequately. The framework of the proposed draft act appears to compromise our rights ensured under article 31 and 43 (B) of the Constitution. In the age of emerging technology and artificial intelligence we need a strong Personal Data protection Law that is followed and practiced widely across the world, which will be able to ensure citizens Privacy, protect their personal data, ensure protection of human rights, and right to justice. Besides, we need such a Data Protection Law that will help the current government to achieve its vision of SMART Bangladesh.
Salwa Tabassum Hoque in her presentation stated that on many occasions’ videos of women and Childrens are captured to report oppression on women and children and published without their consent, which also breaches their right to privacy, and we need to rethink about these practices. Judiciary in many countries are seen to have started using artificial intelligence for adjudication of cases. But artificial intelligence may not understand any circumstance that humans can, and any flaws in data input into the artificial intelligence is likely to render the artificial intelligence’s output flawed or wrong. Overall, this kind of output could be harmful for us. Our proposed data protection law could follow some of the related provisions from Europe’s GDPR in this regard.
