AMONG the most alarming aspects of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s recent moves to implement a Web Monitoring System is the haste in which the latter was conceived and the PTA’s directions to the telecom industry to implement it. In effect, telcos are expected to pay exorbitant costs in order to — and “for the purposes of national security” — monitor, measure, record and filter internet traffic on a massive scale in Pakistan. Given the enormous, long-term potential ramifications of WMS, it is deeply troubling that the process behind it is one shrouded in lack of transparency, with no input from stakeholders such as the telecom industry itself, IT experts, digital rights advocates, or the public. No tender notice was advertised prior to its introduction, nor is it apparent whether there is a process to audit its funds. Moreover, the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat has expressed concerns over the PTA’s agreement with a US-based firm allowing it to monitor web traffic in Pakistan — which in itself indicates an absence of prior parliamentary oversight.

Besides the lack of consultative or fiscal transparency, there are likely to be other financial and social consequences. The cost of blocking more and more websites in Pakistan will have to be borne by the telcos and in turn passed on to consumers — making fixed broadband and cellular data more expensive and thus increasingly inaccessible to many citizens. The onerous process of restricting content — particularly given the opacity regarding these decisions or how to redress them — will also affect quality of service. There will be a cascading effect of economic losses for commercial and individual consumers as a result of slower internet speeds. Another potential consequence of WMS is that services that offer internet voice communications, such as WhatsApp, Messenger and FaceTime, may be blocked in the country, since the encryption they offer would interfere with the ability to surveil communications.

Then there are questions related to the effect WMS will have on civil liberties, particularly in the absence of personal data protection laws and underdeveloped jurisprudence on privacy issues in Pakistan. With the increasing use of digital footprints for intelligence gathering and criminal forensics, can the right to due process remain intact if evidence of an alleged crime is gathered in the absence of a court-ordered warrant specifying the scope of surveillance? Practical and capacity issues notwithstanding, on paper, there is little to prevent ordinary citizens being subjected to the same level of scrutiny as criminals. Moreover, necessary (or simply desired) privacy may become impossible under the WMS regime, endangering, for example, practices such as independent journalism and whistle-blowing. Should citizens be comfortable with this hyper-normalisation of surveillance — incurring all the socioeconomic costs and threats to constitutional rights, without debate or consent — for the sake of ‘security’?

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2019