Amnesty says Pakistan employs China firewall, phone-tapping to spy on citizens

By Anjali Sharma

WASHINGTON – Amnesty International on Tuesday said that Pakistan is spying on millions of its citizens using a phone-tapping system and a Chinese-built internet firewall that censors social media.

It said in a press release that “Pakistan’s mass surveillance and censorship have been made possible through the collusion of a large number of corporate actors operating in diverse jurisdictions such as France, Germany, Canada, China, and the UAE. 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.”

It said in a report released on September 9 that Pakistan’s growing monitoring network was developed using both Chinese and Western technology and has powered a sweeping crackdown on dissent and free speech.

Pakistan’s Web Monitoring System and Lawful Intercept Management System operate like watchtowers, constantly snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens, the rights group stated.

Agnès Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty International, said, “There are human rights limitations to the search for profit in markets, but these have all been ignored. The Pakistani people are paying the highest price.”

WMS 2.0 can block both internet access and specific content, with virtually no transparency.

It said that the concerns have been raised several times regarding unlawful surveillance and online censorship in Pakistan.

Under an oppressive political landscape, the country’s legal system offers no real protection against mass surveillance.

Domestic laws lack safeguards, and those that exist—such as warrant requirements under the Fair Trial Act are often ignored, while authorities acquire ever more sophisticated surveillance and censorship tools from foreign companies. The purchase of these technologies has amplified the country’s capacity to silence dissent, including by targeting journalists, civil society, and the public, the Amnesty stressed.

A journalist interviewed for the report told Amnesty International he believed he was under constant surveillance, which has forced him toward self-censorship.

“Obviously, everything is monitored, be it email or calls.”

He explained that after publishing a story on corruption, he came under severe surveillance that affected him and those around him.

“After the story, anyone I would speak to, even on WhatsApp, would come under scrutiny. The authorities would go to people and ask them, ‘Why did he call you?’ The authorities can go to these extreme lengths… now I go months without speaking to my family [for fear they will be targeted],” the journalist said.

Agnès Callamard said “The mix of inadequate laws and these new technologies is 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.”

Pakistan has been blocking several web links and restricted platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and X since May 2023.

Pakistan government has been flipping the switch to curb the discourse raging online.

In some areas, mobile networks were also blocked, resulted in full connectivity outages. Elsewhere, internet speeds were throttled.

The controls on internet and web links were seen during battles between Imran Khan’s supporters and the Pakistani military, as well as during incidents highlighting the instability and political crisis in the country, including in the insurgency-hit Balochistan province, where districts have faced years-long internet blackouts.

Amnesty International found that the first iteration of the WMS was installed in Pakistan in 2018 using technology provided by a Canadian company, Sandvine, now AppLogic Networks. Amnesty International dubs this WMS 1.0 based on existing research and commercial trade databases.

Pakistani authorities have obtained technology from foreign companies through a covert global supply chain of sophisticated surveillance and censorship tools, particularly the new firewall (the Web Monitoring System and the Lawful Intercept Management System, Amnesty reported.

The new technology from China-based Geedge Networks, utilizing hardware and software components supplied by Niagara Networks from the US and Thales from France, was used to create a new version of the firewall.

The Lawful Intercept Management System uses technology from the German company Utimaco, through an Emirati company called Datafusion.

The commercial trade databases on subscription-based platforms, Amnesty International found that a German company, Utimaco, and an Emirati company, Datafusion, supplied most of the technology that enables LIMS to operate in Pakistan.

Utimaco’s LIMS allows the authorities to sift through telecommunications companies’ subscriber data, which is then made accessible through Datafusion’s Monitoring Center Next Generation.

The report said that LIMS is mandated by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to be installed across telecommunications networks, by private companies, allow the Armed Forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence to tap into and access consumer data, such as phone calls, text messages, and even which websites people visit.

Amnesty stressed that anyone residing in Pakistan and accessing the internet can be subjected to targeted mass-surveillance enabled by LIMS, which allows the interception of phone location, phone calls, and text messages once a phone number is inserted into the system at the request of state agents, including officers of the spy agency, the ISI.

The state agents operating LIMS can see website content if it’s accessed over HTTP by any Pakistani resident (the non-encrypted way to access a website). If accessed through HTTPS, the operator will only see which website was accessed through metadata but not the encrypted content.

Jurre van Bergen, Technologist at Amnesty International said “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.”

“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,” Jurre van Bergen added.