Dangerous surveillance.

Byline: Usama Khilji

TWO recent events, one in Pakistan and one global, serve as a grim reminder of how states have fetishised surveillance technology, and the alarming fallout this fascination has on the dignity and privacy of citizens that have been reduced to subjects of the big brother that is always not only watching but also listening.

One is the revelation about officials of University of Balochistan installing secret cameras in private areas, including bathrooms, to film students - and then using these illegally recorded videos to blackmail students into giving sexual favours. Such gross perversion was enabled by men in a position of power having access to surveillance technology, abusing this power to instal CCTV cameras in private areas, and then proceeding to exploit the vulnerability of the innocent students.

The second is the revelation from WhatsApp about the sophisticated attacks using surveillance technology from the Israeli NSO Group called Pegasus being installed through a missed video WhatsApp call on a target's phone. The NSO Group only sells the surveillance technology to states, and a detailed investigation by WhatsApp and the Toronto-based Citizens Lab revealed that most of the targets were civil society activists and journalists across the world.

The hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in WhatsApp and the phone's operating system to instal this - testament to the dedicated sophisticated research suspect groups like the NSO do in order to sell these capabilities to governments around the world that have an appetite for such invasion of privacy. The malware would then provide access to all the data of the target's phone to the attackers.

The advent of the social media accessed through portable smartphones was celebrated as a democratising force that empowered citizens to have a voice and disrupt power structures - but states with access to resources and power have been quick to grab back that power through measures that have now caused paranoia for all users of technology.

Considering all these excesses, it is unsurprising that the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, has called for a 'global moratorium on the sale, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights-compliant regulatory frameworks are in place'. This call is worthy of support from global citizens groups considering the unprecedented increase of...