In a chilling revelation, Pakistan’s escalating nightmare of unlawful mass surveillance and ruthless censorship is being supercharged by a shadowy alliance of companies from China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and shockingly, supposedly rights-respecting nations in Europe and North America. Amnesty International’s explosive new report, “Shadows of Control,” uncovers this horrifying global conspiracy, conducted in partnership with Paper Trail Media, DER STANDARD, Follow the Money, The Globe and Mail, Justice For Myanmar, InterSecLab, and the Tor Project.
This year-long probe exposes how Pakistani authorities are arming themselves with cutting-edge technology from foreign enablers, via a clandestine worldwide network of advanced surveillance and censorship weapons. At the heart of this dystopia are the upgraded firewall—known as the Web Monitoring System (WMS 2.0)—and the Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS). The report lays bare the evolution of the WMS firewall, which first relied on technology from Canadian firm Sandvine (now rebranded as AppLogic Networks). After Sandvine’s 2023 divestment, it morphed into a more insidious beast powered by China’s Geedge Networks, bolstered by hardware and software from U.S.-based Niagara Networks and France’s Thales. Meanwhile, LIMS draws its venom from Germany’s Utimaco, funneled through UAE’s Datafusion.
“Pakistan’s Web Monitoring System and Lawful Intercept Management System operate like watchtowers, constantly snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens. In Pakistan, your texts, emails, calls and internet access are all under scrutiny. But people have no idea of this constant surveillance, and it’s incredible reach. This dystopian reality is extremely dangerous because it operates in the shadow, severely restricting freedom of expression and access to information,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty International.
“Pakistan’s mass surveillance and censorship have been made possible through the collusion of a large number of corporate actors operating in as diverse jurisdictions as France, Germany, Canada, China and the UAE. This is nothing short of a vast and profitable economy of oppression, enabled by companies and States failing to uphold their obligations under international law,” adds Callamard.
WMS 2.0 isn’t just blocking access—it’s a digital guillotine, capable of severing entire swaths of the internet or surgically censoring “unlawful” content with zero accountability or oversight.
LIMS, enforced by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) on private telecom networks, hands the Armed Forces and the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unchecked power to plunder personal data—from phone calls and texts to browsing histories.
“LIMS and WMS 2.0 are funded by public money, enabled by foreign tech, and used to silence dissent, causing severe human rights harms against the Pakistani people,” said Jurre van Bergen, Technologist at Amnesty International.
Beyond mere spying, these technologies enable wholesale data harvesting on a massive scale, allowing authorities to pry into intimate details of anyone’s online life. WMS 2.0 goes further, obliterating VPNs and blacklisting any site the regime deems threatening, plunging the nation into digital isolation.
A Sinister Surveillance Empire Shrouded in Darkness
Pakistan’s surveillance crisis is no recent anomaly—it’s a longstanding catastrophe, amplified under a repressive regime where laws provide no shield against this invasive onslaught. Domestic safeguards are laughably inadequate; even basic warrant requirements under the Fair Trial Act are routinely trampled. As authorities hoard ever-more-lethal tools from abroad, their ability to eradicate dissent skyrockets, terrorizing journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens alike.
A journalist interviewed for the report told Amnesty International he believed he was under constant surveillance, which has forced him towards self-censorship.
“Obviously, everything is monitored, be it email or calls.” He outlined that after publishing a story on corruption, he came under severe surveillance that affected him and those around them. “After the story, anyone I would speak to, even on WhatsApp, would come under scrutiny. [The authorities] would go to people and ask them, why did he call you? [The authorities] can go to these extreme lengths… now I go months without speaking to my family [for fear they will be targeted],” the journalist said.
“The mix of inadequate laws and these new technologies are accelerating the State’s capabilities to restrict the rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, all of which contribute to a chilling effect and a shrinking of civic space in the country,” Callamard emphasized.
The Shameful Suppliers Behind LIMS: EU and North American Betrayal
Digging through commercial trade databases, Amnesty International pinpointed Germany’s Utimaco and UAE’s Datafusion as the primary culprits supplying LIMS tech. Utimaco’s system lets authorities plunder telecom subscriber data, piped through Datafusion’s Monitoring Center Next Generation (McNG)—a failure of European oversight that screams negligence.
Virtually every Pakistani internet user is now vulnerable to this targeted nightmare: LIMS can intercept locations, calls, texts, and even unencrypted web content with a simple phone number entry, at the whim of ISI agents or other state operatives. For encrypted HTTPS sites, metadata still betrays which pages were visited, stripping away any illusion of privacy.
“Due to the lack of technical and legal safeguards in the deployment and use of mass surveillance technologies in Pakistan, LIMS is in practice a tool of unlawful and indiscriminate surveillance that allows the government to spy on more than four million people at any given time,” said Jurre van Bergen.
The National Firewall Horror: China’s Export, Enabled by Western Indifference
Building on prior exposes and trade data, Amnesty International traced WMS’s origins to 2018, when Canada’s Sandvine shipped the initial version—WMS 1.0—to Pakistani firms like Inbox Technologies, SN Skies Pvt Ltd, and A Hamson Inc., all with deep government ties. This North American export laid the foundation for disaster.
A leaked Geedge dataset reveals that by 2023, WMS 1.0 was supplanted by China’s Geedge Networks, creating WMS 2.0—a commercial clone of China’s infamous “Great Firewall,” now poisoning other nations. Shockingly, this upgrade depends on components from U.S. Niagara Networks and France’s Thales, highlighting a profound betrayal by North American and EU entities who prioritize profits over principles.
A Catastrophic Vacuum of Regulation and Accountability
Of the 20 companies confronted by Amnesty International, only a handful deigned to respond: U.S. Niagara Networks and Canada’s AppLogic Networks (ex-Sandvine) addressed initial queries, as did Datafusion and Utimaco in October 2024—though the latter pair ignored follow-ups on the damning findings.
Amnesty also challenged nine governments. Germany’s BAFA and Canada’s Trade Controls Bureau merely acknowledged letters, stonewalling on substance. Pakistan’s regime offered total silence.
This scandal lays bare the egregious failures of EU nations like Germany, and North American powerhouses like Canada and the U.S., whose lax regulations, export controls, and transparency voids have allowed surveillance tech to flow unchecked into abusive hands. China and the UAE compound the crisis, but the hypocrisy of Western democracies—professing human rights while enabling their erosion—is nothing short of alarming. Without urgent intervention, this economy of oppression will only metastasize, dooming millions to a future of fear and silence.
