From phones being tapped to rooms being bugged to brigades of officers smashing through hotels, the right to privacy is clearly a forbidden fruit in our country and the latest victim to claim an infringement of her fundamental freedom is former law minister Shireen Mazari. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, she brought to light how her staff had located a voice recording device–allegedly the same as found at her party chief Imran Khan’s residence– conveniently tucked in her bedroom. Now, the jury is still out on the authenticity of her accusations but the sitting government would be well-advised to not waste a moment before finding out the underlying realities. After all, no information, however precious, is worth stooping low to fascist tactics and barbarous excesses should be better left to Orwellian nightmares. While what happened to Ms Mazari was a textbook definition of a violation of one’s chadar and chaar dewar, a tried-and-tested feature of authoritarian summers as they tirelessly pursue all voices of dissent only to crush them when need be, a verdict by Justice Qazi Faez Isa has previously enunciated the spirit of the law in bold letters. By validating how “in our constitutional democracy, it is essential that everyone enjoys his or her domain of freedom, free from government intrusion – lest it aim to check an unlawful activity,” he not only silenced the apprehension of those quarters who routinely chide the constitution for not paying much attention to this key protection but also streamlined the line of action that the executive can follow in any given scenario. Amid the never-ending bonanza of audio and video leakages, it is not just the politicians who get to stomach these low blows (easily dismissed as toing and froing of Medusa’s vengeance). PML-N’s Vice President Maryam Nawaz had taken the country by storm after the shocking revelations about cameras inside her prison quarters and even bathroom but everyone from judges to journalists shift weight from one foot to the other, sitting in the same boat. From tapped phone conversations to build a case for the dissolution of Benazir Bhutto’s government to surveillance photos of former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, our short history is replete with examples of Big Brother’s vigour to trample the rights offered by Article 14 for short-term gains. But by ordering a comprehensive investigation over whose nefarious designs led to a voice recorder in the residence of a prominent opposition leader, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif can do the unthinkable: steer this nauseatingly toxic ship towards regard for decency, regard for human dignity. *