TWO recent events, one in Pakistan and one global, serve as a grim reminder of how states have fetishised surveillance technology, and the alarming fallout this fascination has on the dignity and privacy of citizens that have been reduced to subjects of the big brother that is always not only watching but also listening.

One is the revelation about officials of University of Balochistan installing secret cameras in private areas, including bathrooms, to film students — and then using these illegally recorded videos to blackmail students into giving sexual favours. Such gross perversion was enabled by men in a position of power having access to surveillance technology, abusing this power to instal CCTV cameras in private areas, and then proceeding to exploit the vulnerability of the innocent students.

The second is the revelation from WhatsApp about the sophisticated attacks using surveillance technology from the Israeli NSO Group called Pegasus being installed through a missed video WhatsApp call on a target’s phone. The NSO Group only sells the surveillance technology to states, and a detailed investigation by WhatsApp and the Toronto-based Citizens Lab revealed that most of the targets were civil society activists and journalists across the world.

The hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in WhatsApp and the phone’s operating system to instal this — testament to the dedicated sophisticated research suspect groups like the NSO do in order to sell these capabilities to governments around the world that have an appetite for such invasion of privacy. The malware would then provide access to all the data of the target’s phone to the attackers.

The University of Balochistan case is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg of privacy violations in Pakistan.

The advent of the social media accessed through portable smartphones was celebrated as a democratising force that empowered citizens to have a voice and disrupt power structures — but states with access to resources and power have been quick to grab back that power through measures that have now caused paranoia for all users of technology.

Considering all these excesses, it is unsurprising that the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, has called for a “global moratorium on the sale, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights-compliant regulatory frameworks are in place”. This call is worthy of support from global citizens groups considering the unprecedented increase of surveillance by states.

Pakistan also bought itself a fancy $18.5 million surveillance technology from Sandvine, a Canadian company, for its forebodingly-named Web Monitoring System that required all PTA licensees — telecom operators and internet service providers — to contribute funds under licensing terms. The PTA has already presented the WMS in the Islamabad High court in a writ petition “for monitoring/curbing of grey traffic and to assist blocking of content on unsecured sites”, clearly establishing the link between surveillance and censorhip that is emboldened by the draconian Section 34 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016.

The University of Balochistan case is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg of privacy violations in Pakistan. In the last few years, we have also seen multiple leaks of intimate CCTV footage of people captured by the ‘safe city’ invasive cameras that intrusively flash at every passing vehicle on major roads of Pakistani cities, almost asking for smiles for the big brother. This again raises the issue of critical private footage of citizens being available to officials with a penchant to abuse their power and access to footage that should be subject to the highest privacy standards.

We must applaud the courage of the survivors of the University of Balochistan illegal filming, blackmail, and harassment for speaking up. The officials who abused their authority in the most perverse manner must face consequences, for not only violating the dignity of students when they should be safeguarding them, but also because this incident is bound to impact female higher education enrolment in a province that already has a very low literacy rate.

Ironically, student leaders marching during last month’s student solidarity march demanding an end to surveillance on campuses were identified using the safe city cameras installed on Lahore’s boulevards, and cases registered against them. There has to be a stop to the state’s undue trampling of fundamental rights. However, in more than just a few cases where an enforced disappearance, harassment, or mugger required investigation, the safe city cameras were conveniently not functioning. Are these cameras really for safety of citizens? The answer seems quite obvious.

Unfortunately, these issues are not restricted to just the land of the pure. A group of South Asian activists gathered in Nepal last month declared a ‘democracy emergency’ in the region — and it can be argued it extends the world over. States that otherwise antagonise each other are using increasingly similar tactics to silence dissent, criticism, and demands for rights and human security in the region. Hence a need for solidarity between citizens that are increasingly divided across borders by ruling elites.

There must be accountability of state actors who have access to critical information about citizens, and there must be consequences for abuse of power by private and state actors that misuse surveillance technology such as seen in the University of Balochistan case, as well as the Pegasus virus infection through WhatsApp video calls.

Social media companies need to invest a lot more in ensuring security of critical infrastructure and user data against hackers that manage to bypass encryption, as well as their own handling of data. Companies selling surveillance technology must be regulated by high standards of human rights to the curb sale of technology that violates rights through rights-friendly licensing terms and export regulations by host governments.

Most importantly, states need to be held accountable against abusing the powerful access to data of citizens on a micro level when officers misuse data, and at a macro level where mass surveillance is carried out to violate basic rights. To begin with, Pakistan’s government must introduce a data protection and privacy law that covers state officials as well — and build on expanding the right to privacy under Article 14 of the Constitution.

The writer is director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.

usama@bolobhi.org

Twitter: @UsamaKhilji

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2019