Usama Khilji: PECA, NCCIA's 15 Offices, and Pakistan's Creator Economy Crisis | LUBP Ep 14

Usama Khilji, co-founder and director of Bolo Bhi, joins Let Us Build Pakistan for a wide-ranging conversation on Pakistan's digital rights landscape, from PECA's 2025 amendments to why creator accounts get suspended with no institution accountable for fixing it. In this episode: how a senator admitted being told how to vote before a law was even debated, why NCCIA's 15 reporting stations can't serve 240 million people, the Digital Rights Foundation's helpline built by one lawyer in Lahore doing what PTA still can't, and why civil society organizations, not government bodies, are the ones actually teaching Pakistanis digital safety. Subscribe to Let Us Build Pakistan: @LetsBuildPK #Pakistan #LUBP #UsamaKhilji #DigitalRights #ChildSafety #internetshutdown TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 — Highlights 2:44 -- Introduction: Usama Khilji, Bolo Bhi co-founder and director 3:46 — Why 2012 was the turning point — URL filtering, surveillance systems, YouTube blocked 5:12 — Pakistan's constitutional and international commitments on free speech 5:36 — The three-part test for restricting speech: legitimate aim, necessity, proportionality 6:20 — PECA's Section 26A and the vague definition of "false and fake information" 7:44 — 2015: how PML-N's government and opposition responded differently to the PECA bill 8:47 — Remembering Ali Raza Abdi as a genuine advocate for digital rights in parliament 9:34 — Political parties as the door civil society keeps knocking on 10:04 — How PECA has been weaponized by every government against its opposition 11:58 — 2024's internet slowdown — 30-40% degradation from a new firewall system 12:29 — The economic cost: $1 million per hour of shutdown, reputational damage to investment 13:38 — 1.6 million Pakistanis emigrated in 2024 — the world's highest emigration that year 15:26 — The live TV moment: an MNA's voice cutting out while denying internet problems exist 16:33 — No transparency on the firewall upgrade despite millions of dollars spent 19:02 — A senator's confession: "We were told how to vote, we can't do anything" 20:42 — Parliamentarians' digital literacy — most don't run their own social media 22:38 — PIPS report and the 2017 multi-stakeholder consultation model 24:37 — Naming the parliamentarians who actually did the work — Nafisa Shah, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, Ali Raza Abdi 26:13 — Farooq Naek's mentorship and the earliest days of PPP's digital media 26:36 — The telecom bill example — how Palwasha Khan's committee actually caught a real problem 27:45 — "If a tower on your house is a problem, why isn't a journalist in jail?" 28:45 — Correcting the record on India's IT Rules versus Pakistan's ambitions 29:31 — Platforms complying with India's requests to block Pakistani journalists' accounts 30:22 — Google's Pakistan office — marketing versus policy presence, and the legal liability risk 32:09 — UNICEF: 1 in 16 children globally sexually exploited online, South Asia's high incidence 33:14 — NCMEC's cross-platform child protection database 45:46 — Why Pakistan still has no data protection law after seven years of drafts 46:39 — CCTV surveillance, encryption, and the Iran assassination case study 47:37 — AI agents hacking on their own — the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident 49:01 — Policymakers stuck 25 years behind the technology they're regulating 50:29 — Data centre attacks in the Gulf and the risk of "sovereign" data with no real protection 52:36 — SMPRA constituted, staffed with board members, still has no actual staff 54:44 — NCCIA's core admission: "We only have 15 offices in the country" 55:21 — 240 million people, 15 reporting stations, no functional online complaint system 1:03:06 — The creator economy crisis: accounts suspended with no institution to fix it 1:04:26 — Digital Rights Foundation's helpline — built by civil society, doing PTA's job better 1:09:26 — How USAID funding cuts gutted Pakistani civil society organizations 1:10:10 — HRCP's real membership size and why grassroots chapters matter more than headlines 1:11:38 — A rural digital security story: five SIM cards taken on one illiterate woman's fingerprint 1:14:01 — Closing advice: where parents and young people can actually find digital safety resources 1:15:13 — Digital Rights Foundation's guides in six languages, including Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, Pashto