Aziz government bugs Pakistanis

fter the Shaukat Aziz government was recently accused of bugging the telephones and hacking into the email accounts of several parliamentarians, officials have formally admitted that the government has the legal power to authorise any agency or individual to bug telephones and hack into email accounts in the “national interest”. However, fearing flak from the MPs, the government has announced that it has taken no such intrusive steps as far as parliamentarians are concerned.

The United States provided Pakistani intelligence agencies modern technology to help them hack into email accounts after the 9/11 attacks. The ISI and other intelligence agencies have since been using this equipment in tracking down terrorists. However, even before 9/11, the ISI has been known to bug the telephones of opposition leaders and others on the pretext of ‘national security’. Sources say this technology is now being used to access the email accounts of political leaders as well as top journalists.

The controversy first surfaced in the senate when a senator from an opposition party wrote an official letter to the cabinet division accusing the federal government of bugging his telephones and hacking into his email accounts. This letter led many other MPs to voice similar fears, with opposition Senator Rahmat Ullah Kakar actually speaking out about it before the Senate.

An official in the cabinet division told TFT that the opposition MPs’ troubling queries were deliberately ignored by the cabinet division for a few months because senior officials had hoped that the issue would be dropped. However, Kakar and other senators continued to pursue the issue, finally forcing the cabinet division to reply to his letters.

Now the cabinet division has sent an exclusive report to the Senate in response to the MPs’ concerns. The report, a copy of which is with TFT, clearly states that the cabinet division never authorised any agency or individual to scan the emails and bug the telephones of senators.

However, in another report submitted to the minister in-charge of the cabinet division, the government’s policy on bugging and hacking has been clearly outlined. The report says the government does have the power to authorise these intrusions and has done so in the past for reasons of “national security”.

This second report says that section 54(1) of the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-Organisation) Act dealing with National Security, states that “notwithstanding any thing contained in any law for the time being in force, in the interest of national security or in the apprehensions of any offence, the federal government may authorise any person or persons to intercept calls and messages or trace calls through any telecommunication system”.

The report also says that under this clause, the federal government has the power to institute or designate any agency to carry out the authorised monitoring of telephones and the scanning of emails, if doing so helps increase national security.

But, says the cabinet division, no agency or individual has been authorised by it (cabinet division) to target parliamentarians. However, to ensure safety against terrorists and anti-state elements, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority as a regulatory body has issued instructions to all ISPs to maintain a record of log files of their customers for a period of one month to facilitate tracking down culprits involved in cyber crimes.

Commenting on the report, an official of the cabinet division told TFT that while the division had denied bugging the phones and hacking of email accounts of MPs, it did not say whether this was also true for other government officials, ministers, judges and journalists.

“It is a known fact that Pakistani intelligence agencies have been bugging the telephones of top government leaders, opposition MPs, judges and journalists,” said an observer, “however, this is the first time that the government has been openly accused of indulging in this practice.”

In the past, the agencies had limited their intrusions to bugging telephones. Now it is also targeting email accounts. Concerned MPs are asking questions about these practices and want to know whether there is an official policy that allows these intrusions, and if so under what circumstances can the agencies do so.

In his letter to the Senate of Pakistan, senator Kakar has questioned the cabinet division about whether the ISI really is bugging telephones and hacking email accounts of parliamentarians. He has also asked for the reasons for these “unethical” intrusions and questioned motives based on “national interest”.