E- Surveillance Vis-A-Vis Privacy Rights: An Analysis of Western and the Shari'ah Perspectives

Abstract

With the proliferation of digital technologies at the hands of individual and the state, the tension between security and privacy has further escalated. The immense development of information and communication technologies nowadays has become an unavoidable means to help assuring national security by way of electronic surveillance. However, such e-surveillance must be within the domain of necessity and therefore should respect inherent privacy right of every individual and it is a recent-past outcry in the West. Interestingly, this concept of privacy rights had been embraced extensively through Prophet Muḥammad (p.b.u.h) 1405 years back in Islam. Moreover, Islam extremely values and respects individual privacy rights by way of human dignity regardless of race, sex, color and religious belief. Thus this research work is penned to formulate the importance of protecting privacy rights for every individual under the sharīʿah point of views and draw a critical analysis of it between Islamic and Western perspectives. This study will also attempt to develop a policy prescription from Islamic management perspective based on the teachings of the holy Qur’ān, the ḥadīth and contemporary Islamic literatures.

Keywords: E-surveillance, Privacy Rights, Muḥtasib, Islamic law Perspective, Western law Perspective.