Amnesty International has accused Pakistan of running one of the world’s most extensive surveillance systems outside China, using a phone-tapping network and a Chinese-built internet firewall to monitor millions of citizens and suppress dissent.
In a report released on Tuesday, Amnesty said Pakistan’s Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS) allows intelligence agencies to monitor at least four million mobile phones at a time, while a Web Monitoring System (WMS 2.0) inspects internet traffic and can block up to two million active sessions simultaneously.
The rights watchdog said the two systems operate in tandem, enabling the interception of calls, texts and emails, alongside the slowing or blocking of websites and social media platforms across the country.
“The Armed Forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) use the Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS) to surveil a significant portion of the population’s digital activity through Pakistani telecommunications providers,” Amnesty said.
The watchdog described the tools as “watchtowers, constantly snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens” with “incredible reach” that severely restricts freedom of expression and access to information.
Balochistan ‘hardest hit’
Amnesty said the impact has been felt most severely in insurgency-hit Balochistan, where districts have faced years-long internet shutdowns and rights groups accuse the military of enforced disappearances and killings of activists, allegations the state denies.
A Baloch human rights defender told Amnesty she had stopped using her SIM card out of fear of being “forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained.” She said authorities repeatedly pressured her family and colleagues to make phone contact so her location could be traced.
“They told my family that 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 said. “They also warned that phones of all my family members are being traced in hopes that they will lead them to me.”
Amnesty warned that such surveillance creates “a chilling effect in society, whereby people are deterred from exercising their rights, both online and offline.”
It added that Pakistan’s centralised data systems leave citizens vulnerable, and that the scope of spying is expected to expand with the Digital Nation Pakistan Act 2025, which will create a national digital identity and centralise governance, social and economic data.
The watchdog said that mass surveillance works alongside frequent censorship. The WMS firewall enables authorities to block specific content, slow down connections or shut down the internet entirely.
Technology and suppliers
Amnesty said the systems were built using technology supplied by a global network of companies. LIMS, sold by German company Utimaco, allows classification of internet traffic and mobile communications such as calls, text messages and voice data, and stores them for authorities to review. Using only a phone number, agencies can access subscriber data through a Monitoring Centre Next Generation (McNG), a product by UAE-based Datafusion, formerly Trovicor.
“Operators can see who has been calling whom, when this happened, what websites were browsed, if someone used WhatsApp or a VPN, and their location,” Amnesty said.
Alongside Utimaco and Datafusion, France’s Thales and US-based Niagara Networks were identified as hardware or software suppliers. An earlier version of the Web Monitoring System was installed in 2018 by Canadian company Sandvine, now AppLogic Networks, but has since been replaced with a more advanced firewall from Chinese firm Geedge Networks. Amnesty described this firewall as a commercialised version of China’s “Great Firewall,” designed for state censorship. The watchdog said Chinese company New H3C Technologies also provided components for the system.
Amnesty said its findings draw partly on a 2024 case in the Islamabad High Court, filed by Bushra Bibi, the wife of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, after her private calls were leaked online. While Pakistan’s defence ministries and intelligence agencies denied having the capacity for phone tapping, the telecom regulator acknowledged ordering mobile operators to install LIMS for use by “designated agencies.”
‘Economy of oppression’
“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 ordinary citizens,” Amnesty technologist Jurre van Berge told Reuters.
Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard called the system “a vast and profitable economy of oppression” enabled by companies and states failing to uphold their human rights obligations.
Independent experts said Pakistan’s combination of phone tapping and nationwide internet filtering is unusual. “Having both constitutes a troubling development from a human rights perspective and suggests greater restrictions on freedom of expression and privacy will become more common,” said Ben Wagner, Professor of Human Rights and Technology at IT:U in Austria.
Amnesty said the companies Geedge Networks, Utimaco, Datafusion and Niagara Networks have “contributed to human rights abuse in Pakistan by facilitating mass surveillance.”
Amnesty said it contacted 20 companies and nine government entities during its investigation. Only a handful responded, including Utimaco, Datafusion, Niagara Networks and AppLogic Networks, which said they sell to law enforcement or have grievance mechanisms but do not control end use.
Pakistan’s defence, technology, interior and information ministries, as well as the telecom regulator, did not respond to Amnesty’s requests for comment.
“Mass surveillance and unlawful censorship by the Pakistani authorities represent systemic abuses of fundamental human rights,” Amnesty concluded. It called for “urgent action” to prevent further harm, warning that unchecked digital repression will continue to shrink civic space and limit democracy.