Pakistan: Mass surveillance and censorship machine is fueled by Chinese, European, Emirati and North American companies

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37138319

Full Report: “Shadows of Control”.

::: spoiler Investigation Partners

• Paper Trail Media;
• DER STANDARD;
• Follow the Money;
• The Globe and Mail;
• Justice For Myanmar;
• InterSecLab;
• The Tor Project.
  :::

The investigation exposes how Pakistani authorities have obtained technology from foreign companies, through a covert global supply chain of sophisticated surveillance and censorship tools, particularly the new firewall (the Web Monitoring System [WMS 2.0]) and a Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS). The report documents how the WMS firewall has evolved over time, initially using technology supplied by Canadian company Sandvine (now AppLogic Networks). Following Sandvine’s divestment in 2023, new technology from China-based Geedge Networks, utilising hardware and software components supplied by Niagara Networks from the U.S. and Thales from France, were used to create a new version of the firewall. The Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS) uses technology from the German company, Utimaco, through an Emirati company called Datafusion.