Explainer: Inside the Machinery of Pakistan’s New Surveillance State

How Chinese firewalls, Western intercept tools, and Emirati brokers fused into an industrial-scale system of control

When Amnesty International released its latest report on Pakistan, the headline was not about possibility but reality: the country’s mass spying and censorship are no longer whispers or one-off shutdowns, but a built-out, functioning infrastructure. At the core of Amnesty’s findings are two systems: The first, the Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS), sits inside Pakistan’s telecom networks, routing live calls, texts, and location data to state agencies with the capacity to track at least four million devices at once. The second, the Web Monitoring System 2.0 (WMS), operates as a national firewall, capable of blocking or throttling two million internet sessions simultaneously. Together they create what Amnesty International — in its September 2025 report “Shadows of Control,” echoed by reporting from Reuters, Bloomberg, and India Today — bluntly calls “a mass surveillance and censorship machine.”

The details matter because they mark a sharp departure from Pakistan’s past. For years, surveillance was episodic and reactive, with the state leaning on blunt tactics like partial platform bans or provincial internet shutdowns during protests. Now, thanks to this new stack, the system has shifted from ad hoc measures to industrial-scale interception and filtering. The effect is to move surveillance from a tool to an infrastructure—something built in, not switched on temporarily.

The Architecture of Control

Tracing the lineage of this surveillance stack reveals a global supply chain. At its heart is Geedge Networks, a Chinese firm providing the firewall backbone for Web Monitoring System 2.0. Chinese firms have long exported their censorship technology to partners across Asia and Africa, but Pakistan represents one of the most comprehensive deployments outside China itself. Yet this is not an exclusively Chinese story. Western companies are deeply embedded in the system. Amnesty names Utimaco of Germany as providing lawful intercept modules; Niagara Networks of the United States for traffic visibility equipment; and Thales of France for additional hardware and services. Linking them together is Datafusion, an Emirati reseller that acts as a middleman, bundling Western and Chinese products for delivery into Pakistan’s networks.

The result is a hybrid: a Chinese firewall model augmented with Western interception components, distributed by an Emirati conduit, and implemented by Pakistan’s own regulators and security agencies. This blurs the moral geography. It is not just a story of Pakistan opting for authoritarian tools; it is also a story of how democratic states and their companies become enablers when their exports flow into systems of repression. The infrastructure is multinational, and so too is the responsibility.

From Whisper to Reality

For years, Pakistan’s surveillance story lived in the shadows: anecdotes of journalists tapped, rumors of politicians’ calls leaked, occasional platform bans during protests. Amnesty’s report, echoed by Reuters, Bloomberg, and most Indian publications, turns those whispers into measurable scale. Four million phones. Two million sessions. Hundreds of thousands of links blocked. This is not conjecture. It is capacity, verified.

The Lawful Intercept Management System does not just target a suspect’s line; it allows simultaneous interception of millions of conversations, with geolocation data bundled in. The Web Monitoring System 2.0 does not just block a few websites; it can throttle traffic across entire platforms, slow video streaming to a crawl, or simply switch off connectivity for provinces deemed troublesome.

The sharpest example came this summer in Balochistan, where internet access was cut for nearly a month. Connectivity was restored in early September, only to be toggled on and off in the days that followed. Doctors, students, businesses, and families were collateral damage in what officials called “law and order” measures. What the shutdown demonstrated was less about local unrest and more about state capacity: the ability to flick internet access on and off like a light switch.

The Legal Cover

How does Islamabad justify this? On paper, the powers come from three sources. The Investigation for Fair Trial Act of 2013 authorizes state agencies to intercept communications with warrants, but critics say warrants are routinely issued in bulk and rarely scrutinized. The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) of 2016 grants regulators sweeping authority to block “unlawful online content,” a phrase elastic enough to cover anything from terrorist propaganda to political satire. Meanwhile, telecom laws oblige operators to comply with state interception requests.

In theory, these statutes should operate under judicial oversight. In practice, they provide a blanket of legality without meaningful safeguards. Amnesty and local rights groups argue the framework fails three international tests: it lacks transparency, it fails to ensure proportionality, and it provides no real remedy for citizens whose rights are violated. In other words, the laws enable what the machinery now makes possible.

Why This Moment Is Different

The difference today lies in three features. First, the scale: what was once about intercepting individual suspects is now about surveilling millions concurrently. Second, the clarity of suppliers: Amnesty has drawn a straight line from European and American vendors, through Emirati resellers, to Pakistan’s operators. Third, the use of shutdowns as routine governance: what happened in Balochistan was not extraordinary but illustrative of how the state now manages information.

This makes Pakistan a case study in the globalization of authoritarian infrastructure. It is no longer plausible to claim surveillance is a domestic choice insulated from international responsibility. The hardware, software, and services cross borders long before they cross into citizens’ phones and laptops.

The Human Impact

The implications for Pakistan’s citizens are stark. For journalists, the knowledge that calls may be tapped in real time chills reporting. For activists and opposition parties, the awareness that video calls or WhatsApp groups can be throttled discourages organizing. For ordinary citizens, the expansion of blocklists—now exceeding 650,000 links, according to court filings—shrinks the informational space where public debate once occurred.

Shutdowns multiply the harm. When provinces lose internet access, students miss exams, doctors lose telemedicine links, shopkeepers lose access to mobile payments, and families lose contact with relatives abroad. It is collective punishment disguised as security policy.

Over time, the most corrosive effect is psychological. When people assume surveillance is constant, self-censorship becomes second nature. Trust in institutions erodes, and the relationship between citizen and state is recast: no longer one of governance, but of surveillance.

Risks for the State

The irony is that such systems can weaken the state even as they empower it. Blanket shutdowns impair situational awareness for security services, leaving them blind during crises. Economic costs mount as e-commerce, banking, and remittances falter during connectivity blackouts. Internationally, Pakistan’s embrace of foreign-supplied surveillance equipment invites scrutiny at a moment when the country relies on Western creditors and diplomatic goodwill. A state that builds its legitimacy on control risks undermining its stability when that control turns into operational blindness and economic damage.

The International Dimension

For Washington, Brussels, and London, the Amnesty report poses an uncomfortable question: how much of Pakistan’s surveillance stack is made with Western parts? The naming of specific vendors—Utimaco, Niagara Networks, Thales—means the question cannot be ducked. Export-control regimes and human-rights due diligence processes are implicated.

This creates a dilemma. Confront Islamabad directly risks alienating a nuclear-armed state already economically fragile and geopolitically tethered to China. Ignoring the report, however, risks complicity. For Western governments that champion “digital rights,” the contradiction is glaring. London cannot plausibly extol online freedoms while Thales’ equipment sits inside a censorship firewall in Karachi.

China’s role is less conflicted: Beijing openly exports surveillance as part of its commercial and diplomatic toolkit. For Pakistan, the Chinese model provides not only the hardware but also the political comfort of precedent. Digital authoritarianism is no longer taboo; it is a template.

Why Build It Now?

The timing reflects three pressures. Domestically, Pakistan is in flux: judicial dissent is louder, opposition parties are regrouping, and civilian authority remains precariously balanced with the military establishment. Surveillance buys the state breathing space. Internationally, counterterrorism remains a convenient justification, even as Amnesty insists the scale suggests political control, not just security, is the target. And geopolitically, the deepening partnership with Beijing lowers the stigma of censorship. What was once seen as extraordinary now feels normalized, even inevitable.

What Happens Next

Three things bear watching. First, the responses of the named vendors: will Western companies confirm their role, deny it, or retreat into silence? Second, the behavior of Pakistan’s courts: can outspoken judges force transparency, or will the judiciary succumb to establishment pressure? Third, the evolution of blackout governance: if Balochistan is precedent, will Punjab or Sindh see the same treatment? If so, connectivity itself will become a privilege distributed at the state’s discretion.

International scrutiny will also sharpen. The European Union and the United States face mounting pressure to align export controls with their rhetoric on digital rights. Pakistan, for its part, will continue to balance between its Western creditors and its Chinese supplier, navigating the contradictions of being both a debtor to the IMF and a client of Beijing.

The Bottom Line

Pakistan’s surveillance state is no longer improvised. It is engineered. At its core lies a Chinese firewall, augmented by Western intercept modules, supplied by Emirati brokers, and operated by Pakistani agencies under thin legal cover. The system can tap millions of phones, throttle millions of internet sessions, and plunge entire provinces into blackout.

The question now is not whether Pakistan can do this—it already does. The question is whether anyone can stop it from becoming the country’s default operating system. Citizens may resist, courts may probe, allies may scold, vendors may retreat. But until checks are enforced, the machine hums. And with it hums the uneasy realization that every call, every click, and every connection in Pakistan passes through the gears of an infrastructure built to watch, silence, and control.