KARACHI: Pakistan is spying on millions of its citizens using a phone-tapping system and a Chinese-built Internet firewall that censors social media, in one of the most comprehensive examples of state surveillance outside China, Amnesty International said.
The rights watchdog said in a report released on Tuesday that Pakistan’s growing monitoring network was built using both Chinese and Western technology and powered a sweeping crackdown on dissent and free speech. Already restricted political and media freedoms in Pakistan have tightened in recent years, particularly after the military broke with then-Prime Minister Imran Khan in 2022, who was later jailed and thousands of his party activists were detained.
Pakistan’s spy agencies can monitor at least 4 million mobile phones at a time through its Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS), while a firewall known as WMS 2.0 that inspects Internet traffic can block 2 million active sessions at a time, Amnesty said.
The two monitoring systems function in tandem: one lets intelligence agencies tap calls and texts while the other slows or blocks websites and social media across the country, it said. The number of phones under surveillance could be higher as all four major mobile operators have been ordered to connect to LIMS, Amnesty technologist Jurre van Berge told Reuters.
