Nighat Dad "My optimism comes from the support, the solidarity, and the strength that I get from the rest of the community."

Nighat Dad is the Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation. She is an accomplished lawyer and a human rights activist. Nighat is one of the pioneers who have been campaigning around access to open internet in Pakistan and globally. She is a TED Global Fellow for 2017, has been listed as TIME’s Next Generation Leader, and is the recipient of Atlantic Council Freedom Award, and Human Rights Tulip Award.

This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted as part of the Humans of the Internet space at MozFest 2017. Browse other interviews and download the original audio version of this conversation via the Humans of the Internet playlist.

So, tell me a little bit about your work.

My name is Nighat Dad and I’m from Pakistan. I am a founder of a nonprofit organization called the Digital Rights Foundation. We work around issues related to internet freedom, the right to privacy, mass surveillance, and online harassment — things that come under internet governance.

Front page of the Digital Rights Foundation website.

Tell me about a time you felt a sense of success.

I think there are multiple times, especially in my work. Times when I’m able to help someone who reaches out to us with an issue of online harassment. Even resolving one case related to online violence against women gives a sense of success.

Even resolving one case related to online violence against women gives a sense of success.

For a very long time I wanted to start something to address this larger issue in a proper way — with a right redressal mechanism. So I started the Cyber Harassment Helpline last year in December and I felt that was also a success.

Is the helpline international?

No, it’s just for Pakistan. I founded the helpline keeping in mind our context and culture. Women are being harassed in the context of a deep-rooted patriarchy, which is not the case everywhere. It’s a unique context, coming from conservative society.

Tell me about a challenge and how you overcame it.

A couple of years back when I started this work I was very passionate. I’m still very passionate. I think it’s my passion that inspires me everyday to work towards these challenges. There are lots of challenges when you talk about internet freedom or our rights in online spaces. It’s not only the challenges coming from governments clamping down on online speech and citizens’ right to privacy — there are also challenges that come from the public at large, especially if you work in a closed society.

…There are also challenges that come from the public at large, especially if you work in a closed society.

So after seven or eight years I’m starting to feel tired. It’s an everyday struggle and things are hardly getting better. Every day we find a new challenge and have to devise a new solution. The internet is an ever-changing space. It’s very tiring. It burns you out. We have limited resources and it is hard to sustain ourselves and keep working. When somebody is at risk, when they’re facing violence or threats, and they reach out to you in the middle of the night you cannot turn away that request. That’s really exhausting.

When somebody is at risk, when they’re facing violence or threats, and they reach out to you in the middle of the night you cannot turn away that request.

Today I was a speaker at MozFest and I was talking about this exhaustion and how it’s taking away all of our energy. We are only a few people. We need to work together to fight these massive battles: Governments are not on our side. Corporations are not on our side. So there’s an overall anger and frustration.

How do you feel you’re going to overcome these challenges? How can you enlist the help of governments or other organizations?

I cannot do it alone. We need to work together beyond boundaries and borders. We see the same patterns among different governments — be it repressive regimes or so-called democracies. They really want to control this space. They want to control the narrative. So we really need to work together — especially the people who are working towards internet freedom or trying to make these spaces safe for internet users or vulnerable and marginalized communities. We overcome these challenges with solidarity, working together, and channeling funding. It’s not only civic spaces that are shrinking — the funding is also shrinking. We need to work together at all levels.

This space at MozFest is called “Humans of the Internet”. What, for you, is a healthy internet?

A healthy internet for me is an open internet, where users have safe and secure access. To achieve that healthy internet we have to address the things that I’ve just mentioned.

However we cannot just restrict ourselves to the internet-internet [the infrastructure] — we have to consider the humans who are trying to make the internet healthy. So, for example, I just mentioned that I’m exhausted. And if I’m not healthy then I cannot work towards the larger goal of achieving internet freedom and making this space safe.

We need to connect this to human side. We need to pay attention to the people who are paving the ways for others to get access to a healthy internet.

What is something that makes you feel optimistic about the future of the internet?

I’m ridiculously optimistic coming from a context where people get disappeared or arrested for just saying something online.

I think spaces like MozFest are really important. We need to have these spaces more and more. Beyond providing the spaces for people coming from different context or developing countries or places with repressive governments, we also need to provide support to people.

I’m ridiculously optimistic coming from a context where people get disappeared or arrested for just saying something online.

My optimism comes from the support, the solidarity, and the strength that I get from the rest of the community. These may not be people physically around me — but I can find them virtually or in spaces like these, like this festival.

What about something that worries you about the future of the internet?

The thing that worries me is that things are getting out of control. We are all struggling with the same things, yet we won’t achieve a healthy internet unless we do something together. Also I worry that we might not be able to make this space as secure as we want.

What led you to be at MozFest today?

I was to invited to speak. MozFest is really a festival — a non-traditional setting. I like that you don’t just go into sessions. You chill. You have fun. The people are casual and very friendly. I really like that. It’s my first time at MozFest.