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US government’s surveillance system SKYNET, installed by the US National Security Agency in 2014 and 2015, has been keeping tabs on more than 55 million Pakistanis through their mobile phone data, an Israeli author revealed in his latest book.
The prominent Israeli writer Yuval Noah Harari, in his latest book “Nexus”, claims that SKYNET analyzes data from Pakistan’s mobile network to identify potential terrorist threats. By tracking the data of millions, the system predicts individuals’ likelihood of involvement in terrorist activities.
Earlier, a report by the London-based organization Privacy International, titled “Tipping the Scales: Security & Surveillance in Pakistan”, details Pakistan’s mass surveillance practices. According to the report, Pakistan’s government and security agencies not only conduct widespread monitoring but also collaborate with foreign entities, including the NSA and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
The report sheds light on private companies that facilitate such surveillance by selling communications monitoring equipment and supporting its deployment.
It notes that Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of NSA funding, reflecting a longstanding partnership.
Another NSA document, published on June 2012, reveals that through SKYNET, the NSA collects call data from Pakistani telecommunications providers, though the methods remain unspecified. This collection included 55 million phone records, which were analyzed by the NSA’s data systems. Additionally, in June 2015, The Intercept disclosed that GCHQ exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco routers to access Pakistan’s Internet Exchange, allowing comprehensive monitoring of Pakistani Internet traffic and enabling GCHQ to reroute it to their own data systems.
