| APrIGF 2026 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||||||||||
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| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||||||||||
| Contact Person | |||||||||||||
| Mr. Usama Khilji | |||||||||||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||||||||||
| Bolo Bhi | |||||||||||||
| Designation | |||||||||||||
| Director | |||||||||||||
| Gender | |||||||||||||
| Male | |||||||||||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||||||||||
| Pakistan | |||||||||||||
| Stakeholder Group | |||||||||||||
| Civil Society | |||||||||||||
| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||||||||||
| Session Title | |||||||||||||
| Surveillance by Design: Digital ID, Data Protection and the Trust Crisis in South Asia | |||||||||||||
| Thematic Track of Your Session | |||||||||||||
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| Session Format | |||||||||||||
| Panel Discussion (60 minutes) | |||||||||||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||||||||||
| Hybrid (with onsite moderator and speakers both online and offline, with online moderator for questions and comments from remote participants) | |||||||||||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||||||||||
| South Asia — home to over a quarter of the world’s population — is building digital identity and data infrastructures at extraordinary speed. Too often these systems double as instruments of state surveillance, deployed ahead of the legal safeguards needed to constrain them. This panel examines the resulting resilience-and-trust crisis: when a national ID database becomes a de facto spine across public administration without robust governance, when data-protection laws are drafted to expand state access rather than limit it, and when surveillance is normalised under “security and public order” framing, public trust in digital infrastructure erodes — and so does the infrastructure’s resilience. Drawing on documented evidence from the region, country experts will compare how each system strengthens or undermines trust, where the safeguards fail, and what rights-respecting, resilient alternatives look like. The discussion will also examine the intersection of digital governance and emerging AI governance debates in South Asia. As governments across the region develop AI strategies, regulatory frameworks, and public-sector AI initiatives, digital identity systems, data infrastructures, and digital public infrastructure are increasingly becoming the foundation upon which AI systems are built and deployed. Weaknesses in these underlying systems can be amplified when AI is introduced, creating new risks of profiling, exclusion, opacity, and surveillance at scale. The panel will explore what lessons can be drawn from South Asia's experience with digital ID systems, surveillance architectures, and data-protection regimes, and whether these experiences reveal structural challenges that AI governance frameworks must address. Rather than treating AI as a separate policy domain, the discussion will examine how questions of accountability, transparency, public oversight, rights protection, and trust connect digital governance and AI governance, and what safeguards are needed. |
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| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||||||||||
| The session is built squarely on “Digital Resilience and Building of Trust.” Digital ID and data systems are now core public infrastructure across South Asia; when they are designed for control rather than rights, they become brittle and low-trust — a direct resilience risk and a live crisis for hundreds of millions of users. By comparing at least four national contexts, the panel surfaces a regional pattern that no single-country view reveals, and connects it to the overarching theme of safeguarding the Internet in times of crisis. Its contribution to APrIGF outcomes: a comparative, on-the-record picture of how the region’s ID and data regimes affect trust and resilience; a concrete set of safeguards and design principles that advocates, and ideally regulators, can carry into national and regional processes; and material for the Synthesis Document on what rights-respecting digital public infrastructure should require. The session also strengthens cross-border coordination among South Asian stakeholders — including, where possible, a regulator or former official in dialogue with civil society. It links to “Universal and Meaningful Connectivity” by insisting that meaningful connectivity requires infrastructure people can trust. The session also contributes to emerging AI governance discussions in the Asia-Pacific region by situating AI within a broader continuum of digital governance. As governments increasingly develop AI strategies, regulatory frameworks, and public-sector AI initiatives, the resilience, legitimacy, and trustworthiness of these systems will depend on the governance foundations beneath them. The discussion therefore highlights that trustworthy AI cannot be built on unaccountable data, identity, and digital public infrastructures, and explores how lessons from digital identity, surveillance, and data governance debates can inform the design of rights-respecting, resilient, and trustworthy AI governance frameworks. |
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| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||||||||||
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| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) - (Required) | |||||||||||||
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| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||||||||||
| Each speaker brings a different South Asian jurisdiction and a different mode of engagement — litigation, research, grassroots advocacy, and regulation — so the panel reveals a regional pattern rather than a single national story. Including a data-protection regulator or former official alongside civil society is deliberate: it breaks the advocacy-only frame, tests safeguards against what governance actors can realistically adopt, and models the multistakeholder dialogue APrIGF promotes. The lineup spans at least four economies with gender balance, and draws on documented, recent evidence (digital-ID governance failures, surveillance architecture, and current data laws), giving the comparison credibility and the safeguards practical weight. | |||||||||||||
| Has AI been used to develop this proposal? | |||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||
| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2026. | |||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2026? | |||||||||||||
| Yes | |||||||||||||
| Upon evaluation by the Program Committee, your session proposal may only be selected under the condition that you will accept the suggestion of merging with another proposal with similar topics. Please state your preference below: | |||||||||||||
| Yes, I am willing to work with another session proposer on a suggested merger. | |||||||||||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||
| Gender Balance in Moderators/Speakers (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||
| Consent | |||||||||||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2026. |
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