Pakistan allows powerful spy agency to tap phone calls and messages

Government claims authorisation for ISI, which is run by military, is limited to tracking criminal and terrorist activities

Pakistan police (EPA)

Pakistan has authorised its powerful spy agency to tap phone calls and messages, tightening the army’s grip on the South Asian nation.

Citizens and human rights advocates have criticised the move amid fears it could be weaponised to suppress political opponents and throttle dissent.

The ISI, which is run by the military, will be able to legally intercept and trace phone calls and messages in the interest of "national security".

Federal law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told the parliament that the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications has been advised of the authorisation in an 8 July notice.

”Anyone who misuses the law will face action," he said on Tuesday while claiming that the authorisation is limited to tracking criminal and terrorist activities and that the government will ensure it doesn’t infringe people's lives and privacy.

"The federal government in the interest of national security and in the apprehension of any offence is pleased to authorise officers," the notice states, according to Reuters, “to intercept calls and messages or to trace calls through any telecoms system.”

Parliamentarians from jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party opposed the decision.

Khan has previously backed the ISI's surveillance of telephone calls of politicians, even his own, in the absence of legal authorisation.

Omar Ayub Khan, the opposition leader in the parliament, said the spy agency will use its powers even against lawmakers and vowed that his party will mount a legal challenge.

A Pakistani citizen challenged the notification in the Lahore high court on Monday.

The opposition leader said the authorisation, which allows the spy agency to monitor social media accounts as well, gives it power to control free speech.

“Only a fascist government would grant an intelligence agency complete authority to tap citizens’ phones,” he was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.

By promulgating this measure, he said, prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has “cut his own throat”.

The law minister responded that police and intelligence agencies already "operate under this law whenever access to some data or interception is required".

He recalled that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassins were tracked down using similar methods in 2007.

“Time and again, we have witnessed that in the name of national security, individual freedoms are consistently under attack,” Iqbal Khattak, executive director of the Freedom Network civil liberties group in Islamabad, told Arab News.