Privacy

Open Letter to Facebook

7 October 2019 Dear Mr. Zuckerberg, OPEN LETTER: FACEBOOK’S END-TO-END SECURITY PLANS The organizations below write today to encourage you, in no uncertain terms, to continue increasing the end-to-end security across Facebook’s messaging services. We have seen requests from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australian governments asking you to suspend these plans “until [Facebook] can guarantee the added privacy […]

Internet Surveillance

REPORTS of the government installing the Web Monitoring System (WMS) first came to prominence when questions relating to its set-up were raised in the Senate regarding the type of company that has been tasked to supply the technology. The WMS is, on the face of it, being installed by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to monitor, […]

Data Protection Law

The introduction of a draft law on data protection and privacy by the IT and telecom ministry is a welcome step. In the absence of such a law, Pakistani citizens have had their privacy breached and personal data leaked and used without their consent a number of times by individuals, companies, and the state. It […]

Facebook Security Breach and What You Should Do

Friday, 5th October 2018 – Facebook reported a massive security breach that compromised the accounts of up to 50 million users. Company officials have been unable to determine the scope of the attack, and pressing questions such as what data was taken, by whom, and for what purpose, remain unanswered. It is also unclear whether […]

Bolo Bhi challenges Section 9.8 of Telecom Policy in Court

Bolo Bhi has amended its existing petition before the Islamabad High Court challenging the government and PTA’s powers to block content online, to include Section 9.8 of the Telecom Policy launched by the Ministry of IT in January 2016, which seeks to empower PTA with content management powers online. See: Application to amend plaint Application […]

Entry #1: July 29, 2015

About #SnooperDiaries: We read about Hacking Team and its involvement in Pakistan. And then the Privacy International report on surveillance in Pakistan. We of course knew about FinFisher already. So today, sitting around at the office, we at Bolo Bhi figured since we’re all being surveilled any way, why not make the jobs of our […]

Snooper Diaries

About #SnooperDiaries: We read about Hacking Team and its involvement in Pakistan. And then the Privacy International report on surveillance in Pakistan. We of course knew about FinFisher already. So today, sitting around at the office, we at Bolo Bhi figured since we’re all being surveilled any way, why not make the jobs of our […]

Surveillance in Pakistan: A Look at Privacy International’s Report

Fact: Over 70% of Pakistan’s population has mobile phone subscriptions Fact: 11% (approximately) of Pakistan’s population uses the Internet Fact: All those using the above-mentioned services are under surveillance Privacy International (PI), a London-based organization that specializes in investigating government surveillance behaviour, published a report titled Tipping the Scales: Security & Surveillance in Pakistan. Privacy […]

Resources on Filtering and Surveillance in Pakistan

It comes as no surprise, especially after the Snowden revelations, that surveillance is taking place in Pakistan. Privacy International’s report only confirms what Bolo Bhi, like many others, have believed for a while now. In 2012, Citizen Lab published two reports pointing towards the presence of FinFisher and Netsweeper in Pakistan. In the same year, the […]

Internet of Things: Savior or Surveillant?

Looking back 20 years from now, who would’ve thought anything like the internet would ever exist? Days when the most convenient source of communication were landlines and the only way to socialise was to sit together and talk. But today, everything is connected through the internet. People are addicted to it, feel life without the […]