Pakistan Latest To Put In A Membership Application For The 'Privacy Is So 2012' Club

from the oh,-look,-another-one dept

Recently we've been reporting how some countries seem to be trying to play catch-up with the NSA and GCHQ when it comes to surveillance. Here's the latest aspirant to the club -- Pakistan:

The government of Pakistan is proposing a new law that significantly threatens privacy rights, in a blatant attempt to establish a legal regime containing broad powers when it comes to obtaining, retaining, and sharing data obtained through criminal investigations, including communications data.
The Privacy International post quoted above goes on to spell out the details of the proposed Pakistani law. Naturally, there's data retention to obtain the data. The new law:
would require a service provider, which is defined in broad terms, to "within its technical capability, retain its traffic data minimum for a period of ninety days" (a requirement may already be in place under the Electronic Transaction Ordinance, 2002). The definition of traffic data includes information "indicating the communication's origin, destination, route, time, data, size, duration or type of underlying service".
But alongside this affirmation of older powers, there are plenty of new ones setting out some of the things the Pakistani government can do with data it acquires:
The draft law contains a troubling provision that would allow the Federal Government of Pakistan to forward information obtained from investigations under the Act to foreign agencies or international agencies. A prior request from the foreign entity would not be required to exercise this power.
Presumably this will allow Pakistan to offer to swap data with the security agencies of other nations in order to obtain information on people of interest. And as Privacy International points out, once it's gone, it's gone:
The information at stake is expansive: "text, message, data, voice, sound, database, video, signals, software, computer programs, codes including object code and source code". The information shared could include particular sensitive information about individuals or large quantities of data involving significant numbers of people. Once this information has left the hands of the Federal Government, it would no longer be subject to national law and could be used by foreign entities as they see fit.
The new law would also authorize data-flows in the other direction:
Another section, on "trans-border access", would permit the Federal Government or investigation agency to access data that may be "located in a foreign country or territory, if it obtains the lawful and voluntary consent of the person who has the lawful authority to disclose it". This could include personal data held by foreign corporations. This opens up the possibility of abuse, as "trans-border access" could be used to circumvent the safeguards established in other parts of the draft law.
It's easy to see how global companies like Google and Facebook might be persuaded that it would be in their best interests -- if they wish to continue to operate in Pakistan -- to hand over information about their users, stored outside the country's borders. And of course, once some or all of this proposed law is passed, other countries will feel even more entitled to follow suit.

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Filed Under: pakistan, privacy, spying, surveillance


Reader Comments

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  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 25 Apr 2014 @ 2:22am

    Cascade effect. Are we witnessing the second Dark Ages?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 25 Apr 2014 @ 3:43am

      Re:

      With the autocratic governments of the world unfurling their agenda and the arsenal to carry it out, the Dark Ages are starting to look like paradise compared to what they have planned.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 25 Apr 2014 @ 3:52am

      Re:

      What we are witnessing is closer to the thirty years war and subsequent revolutions. These were triggered by printing press, which let people challenge the views of the Catholic church and the Aristocracy. The Internet is letting people challenge centralized government and big corporations.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        John Fenderson (profile), 25 Apr 2014 @ 8:17am

        Re: Re:

        That's a very interesting thought. I hope we can pull off this transformation without all that war, though.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Ryuugami, 26 Apr 2014 @ 12:20am

          Re: Re: Re:

          Especially considering that this time, if things get too much out of hand, there could be a few nukes flying around.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    avideogameplayer, 25 Apr 2014 @ 6:16am

    How would they try and enforce laws if the account holder is in another county?

    That'll be interesting to sort out...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    btr1701, 26 Apr 2014 @ 1:45am

    Operating

    > It's easy to see how global companies like Google and
    > Facebook might be persuaded that it would be in their best
    > interests -- if they wish to continue to operate in Pakistan --
    > to hand over information about their users, stored outside
    > the country's borders.

    That's the great thing about the internet-- Google and Facebook don't have to actually be *in* Pakistan in order to operate there.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pakistani Dresses, 4 Aug 2014 @ 2:24pm

    Privacy Policy should be change

    Thanks for sharing some good knowledge, keep posting more information.
    You are genius.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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