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, marginalized communities, and, indeed, everyone in the country.
These practices continue 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. Pakistan’s legal system fails to protect against mass surveillance practices, both because domestic legislation lacks critical safeguards and because the law is frequently ignored or circumvented in practice.
This report documents how a range of private companies from around the world have provided, and in some cases continue to provide, surveillance and censorship technologies to Pakistan, despite Pakistan’s troubling record on the protection of rights online.
A lack of transparency over the sale and transfer of surveillance and censorship technologies has enabled a flourishing global trade, including exports from Canada, China, Germany, the US and the UAE to Pakistan.
The report highlights the lack of legal safeguards in Pakistan to prevent surveillance and censorship abuses, 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 report offers recommendations for legal reforms in Pakistan to safeguard from surveillance and censorship abuses, as well as steps the companies involved should take to meet their human rights responsibilities.