Global rights body Amnesty International on Tuesday alleged that a yearlong investigation had found the Government of Pakistan is conducting “unlawful mass surveillance and censorship” through tools procured from a nexus of companies based in Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates, China, Canada, and the United States.
According to the rights body, Pakistan obtained the relevant technology from through a covert global supply chain of sophisticated surveillance and censorship tools, particularly a new firewall and the Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS). It said the firewall had evolved from using technology supplied by a Canadian company to new technology from China-based Geedge Networks, with hardware and software components supplied by companies in the U.S. and France. The LIMS, it said, used technology from a German company through an Emirati company.
“Pakistan’s Web Monitoring System and Lawful Intercept Management System operate like watchtowers, constantly snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty Secretary General. “In Pakistan, your texts, emails, calls and internet access are all under scrutiny. But people have no idea of this constant surveillance and its incredible reach. This dystopian reality is extremely dangerous because it operates in the shadow, severely restricting freedom of expression and access to information,” she added.
“Pakistan’s mass surveillance and censorship have been made possible through the collusion of a large number of corporate actors operating in as diverse jurisdictions as France, Germany, Canada, China and the U.A.E,” she said. “This is nothing short of a vast and profitable economy of oppression, enabled by companies and states failing to uphold their obligations under international law,” she said, adding “human rights limitations” had been ignored in the process.
According to Amnesty, the firewall can block both internet access and specific content, while the installation of LIMS is a requirement imposed across telecommunication networks by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to allow the armed forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to tap into and access consumer data, such as phone calls, text messages, and even which websites people visit.
“LIMS and WMS 2.0 are funded by public money, enabled by foreign tech, and used to silence dissent, causing severe human rights harms against the Pakistani people,” said Jurre van Bergen, technologist at Amnesty International.
The rights body states that Pakistan’s legal system offers no real protection against mass surveillance, adding the procurement of the firewall and LIMS had amplified the country’s capacity to silence dissent, including by targeting journalists, civil society and the public. It cited an anonymous journalist who claimed he believed he was under constant surveillance, forcing him toward self-censorship.
“The mix of inadequate laws and these new technologies are accelerating the state’s capabilities to restrict the rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, all of which contribute to a chilling effect and a shrinking of civic space in the country,” said Callamard.
Amnesty said it had found German company Utimaco and Emirati company Datafusion supplied most of the technology that enables LIMS to operate in Pakistan. Utimaco’s LIMS allows the authorities to sift through the telecommunications companies’ subscriber data, which is then made accessible through Datafusion’ Monitoring Center Next Generation. It said that LIMS allowed the interception of phone location, phone calls and text messages of anyone residing in Pakistan once a phone number is inserted into the system at the request of state agents, which includes the officers of the ISI.
Additionally, the state agents operating LIMS can see website content if it’s accessed over HTTP by any Pakistani resident. If accessed through HTTPS, the operator will only see which website was accessed through metadata but not encrypted content.
“Due to the lack of technical and legal safeguards in the deployment and use of mass surveillance technologies in Pakistan, LIMS is in practice a tool of unlawful and indiscriminate surveillance that allows the government to spy on more than four million people at any given time,” said van Bergen.
On the firewall, Amnesty says it was initially installed in 2018 using technology provided by Canadian company Sandvine, now AppLogic Networks. It said the first iteration was replaced using advanced technology from China’s Geedge Networks in 2023. It said the system’s installation and operationalization was enabled by software or hardware provided by two other companies: Niagara Networks from the United States and Thales from France.