By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The government has constructed an expansive digital surveillance and censorship network using technology from companies in Germany, China, Canada, the United States, France and the United Arab Emirates, enabling sweeping violations of privacy, free speech and other rights that suppress dissent and target activists, according to a new Amnesty International report.
The 102-page document, titled “Shadows of Control: Censorship and Mass Surveillance in Pakistan,” draws on leaked corporate files, commercial trade data, network measurements and interviews with human rights defenders, journalists and telecom insiders. It outlines how foreign firms have provided tools for large-scale interception of communications and blocking of online content, as authorities intensify a crackdown involving arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances in the nuclear-armed country of more than 240 million people.
“Pakistan has a long and well-documented record of engaging in unlawful surveillance and online censorship that poses grave risks to the human rights of human rights defenders, marginalised communities and, indeed, everyone in the country,” the report states. It cautions that these practices occur “against a background of an increasingly oppressive political landscape, including the use of draconian laws to criminalize online free expression, a clampdown on protest and assemblies, arbitrary arrests and detentions and enforced disappearances.”
The findings stem from a year-long investigation called the Great Firewall Export, a joint effort by Amnesty International, InterSecLab, Paper Trail Media, Der Standard, Follow the Money, The Globe and Mail, Justice for Myanmar and the Tor Project. Researchers examined 600 gigabytes of leaked data from the Chinese firm Geedge Networks, reviewed trade records and held interviews in September 2024, July 2025 and other periods, revealing a surveillance state supported by shadowy international commerce.
Central to Pakistan’s monitoring efforts is the Lawful Intercept Management System, or LIMS, provided by the German company Utimaco. In place since 2007, the system classifies and stores internet traffic, mobile calls and text messages, allowing the Inter-Services Intelligence agency and military to monitor up to 2 percent of the population’s telecom activity — more than 4 million people — without warrants, based on court documents from a 2024 case in the Islamabad High Court referenced in the report. “This has been done without any court warrant by Pakistani security agencies,” the documents note.
LIMS captures data from telecom providers required to comply under licenses issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, or PTA. Authorities can access call logs, visited websites, app usage such as WhatsApp or VPNs, and user locations. It works in tandem with the Monitoring Centre Next Generation, or McNG, from Datafusion — formerly known as Trovicor and now owned by Canada’s Lumine Group — which supports analysis like speaker identification and keyword detection in encrypted calls. “Through the McNG system operators can see whose been calling whom, when this happened, what websites were browsed, if someone might’ve used WhatsApp or a VPN and their location,” the report details.
Trade records show Datafusion exporting LIMS-related hardware, including servers, switches and fiber bypass units from the U.S. firm Niagara Networks, to Pakistani telecoms such as Jazz, Zong, Telenor and Ufone between 2014 and 2024. These companies control 85 percent of the market. One shipment to Cyber Internet Services included a Niagara fiber switch, linking American equipment to the network. The number of phones under surveillance could exceed initial estimates, as all four major mobile operators have been directed to connect to LIMS, Amnesty technologist Jurre van Bergen told Reuters.
The report connects this infrastructure to tangible harms. A human rights lawyer described how his devices were compromised during 14 days in custody. “My phone and laptop were hacked by the agencies while I was in custody for 14 days. They even left a message on my laptop saying, ‘with love, markhor’ and had changed my password. Obviously, that meant everything on my phone and laptop had been compromised,” he told researchers. Months later, he suspected ongoing monitoring due to his advocacy on enforced disappearances and anti-terrorism charges against ethnic minorities.
A digital media journalist, detained under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, or PECA, reported his WhatsApp being hacked after warnings from the military. “This has impacted my journalism as [now] I am always apprehensive about the safety of my sources, and it has also made sources reluctant to speak with me,” he said. A broadcast journalist added: “as a journalist, I know that I am under surveillance in my digital space… telecom companies in Pakistan are helping the intelligence agencies to intercept my phone calls, messages and even my movement.”
A print and digital journalist spoke of pervasive oversight. “Obviously, everything is monitored, be it email or calls,” he said. After publishing a corruption story, “anyone I would speak to, even on WhatsApp, would come under scrutiny… now I go months without speaking to my family [for fear they will be targeted].” He continued: “As a journalist the totality of your focus should be your work, reporting the truth, but when something like this happens you start to think more about your safety.”
In Balochistan, an activist said that amid an intensified crackdown, “I have stopped using my SIM for fear of being [forcibly] disappeared or arbitrarily detained.” Authorities warned her family: “if I turn on my phone for even a few minutes they will be able to trace my location and will pick me up.” She noted that no advance notice precedes network shutdowns: “In fact, whenever the internet is shut down before or during a protest, it is an indicator that a crackdown [on protesters] is about to start – the aim is to ensure that no information from here reaches people outside Balochistan.” She added: “For us, internet shutdowns are now a reality during protests. Recently we’ve started using walkie-talkies and making announcements from mosque loudspeakers to coordinate during protests because our mobile phones become useless.”
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, an activist explained how shutdowns hinder demonstrations. “The aim of these shutdowns is clear: to ensure that our message of the human rights violations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa do not reach the rest of Pakistan… [The authorities] already control the print media and television channels, they use these shutdowns to ensure videos from our rallies don’t reach people through social media.”
Pakistan’s legal structure offers few protections. PECA, enacted in 2016, confers broad authority without clear definitions for terms like “national security” or “public order.” The Investigation for Fair Trial Act of 2013 mandates warrants, but they are often ignored; PTA records show no warrants filed under it in 11 years. The PTA, headed by retired generals, requires telecoms to install monitoring systems, with funding from the Ignite Fund and Digital Information Infrastructure initiative — including Rs5 billion redirected in 2023 and Rs10 billion approved in 2024.
Censorship centers on the Web Monitoring System, or WMS, Pakistan’s national firewall. The initial version, WMS 1.0, was deployed in 2018 using technology from Canada’s Sandvine, now Applogic Networks, employing deep packet inspection to block platforms like Wikipedia and TikTok. The upgraded WMS 2.0 incorporates tools from China’s Geedge Networks, delivered through the state-owned ELINC to the Pakistani firm ELC Solutions. Geedge’s Tiangou Secure Gateway blocks VPNs, the QUIC protocol and categories such as “anti-state” or “immoral/indecent.”
Leaked data includes 600GB from Geedge, detailing Pakistan’s deployment under the codename P19. U.S.-based Niagara Networks supplied fiber taps for traffic mirroring, French firm Thales DIS managed licensing, and China’s New H3C provided servers. Pakistani companies A Hamson, SN Skies and Inbox assisted with both WMS iterations. The report’s methods included optical character recognition on Chinese documents and large language models for summarization.
Two telecom insiders told researchers: “we cannot refuse requests for information if they come from the military” and “[intelligence agencies] keep asking operators for IP addresses; while civilian agencies such as the FIA and police write to us officially; [intelligence agencies] don’t.”
The PTA has blocked more than 1.4 million URLs since PECA’s passage, with the process marked by opacity and arbitrariness. Users rarely receive notice and discover blocks only when access fails. Internet shutdowns have become routine for maintaining law and order, with at least 77 incidents between 2016 and 2024, including 24 in 2024 alone, according to the Keep it On coalition. These encompass selective site blocking and bandwidth throttling, particularly before the 2024 general elections and during virtual rallies by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.
Data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference confirmed blocks just before the Feb. 8, 2024, election, including the opposition PTI website, PTI candidates’ site and the investigative outlet Fact Focus. “This shows that the new firewall is being used effectively by Pakistani telecommunications providers to actively block crucial communication channels,” the report says.
The LIMS system’s operations surfaced in the Bushra Bibi vs. Federation of Pakistan case at the Islamabad High Court, following leaked audio recordings of calls involving politicians and public figures between 2022 and 2023. The petition sought to probe the recordings and interception legality, revealing PTA directives for telecoms to finance, import and install LIMS for designated agencies.
Amnesty attributes the unchecked surveillance to absent technical and legal safeguards, creating a chilling effect and shrinking civic space. It warns that centralized data systems leave citizens exposed, with risks growing under the Digital Nation Pakistan Act 2025, which aims to establish digital identities integrating social, economic and governance data.
The report identifies four companies — Geedge Networks, Utimaco, Datafusion and Niagara Networks — as contributing to human rights abuses by enabling mass surveillance. “Mass surveillance and unlawful censorship by the Pakistani authorities represent systemic abuses of fundamental human rights,” Amnesty states, urging urgent action to halt further damage and warning that unchecked digital repression will constrain democratic space.
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