‘Phone tapping by agencies can’t be stopped but regulated’

ISLAMABAD: Phone tapping can’t be stopped simply for security reasons, but intelligence agencies’ procedures could be regulated to check issues like AudioLeaks, a former spymaster said.

Talking to The News, he said that phone tapping is done by agencies all around the world for security reasons but what we lack here are the regulations. “We have no regulations, no laws governing the agencies,” the source said, adding that the issue of phone tapping needs to be discussed in-depth to find a solution where the surveillance on issues of national security is protected but there is no space for use of phone tapping material for political purposes or to malign someone.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan on Monday said that the AudioLeaks are a serious breach of national security as they call into question the entire security of the Prime Minister’s Office and House. He added that as the PM his secure line at his residence was also bugged. He announced that the PTI intends to go to court to establish authenticity of leaks and then form a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate which intelligence agency is responsible for the bugging and who is leaking out the audios many of which, he said, are edited or doctored.

The former premier said that this is critical because sensitive security issues are and have been illegally recorded and subsequently hacked, implying confidentiality of Pakistan’s national security has been exposed globally.

Interestingly during his premiership, Imran Khan in a private TV interview had defended the phone tapping by the agencies. Pakistan is among those few democratic countries where the intelligence agencies operate without any regulation. No laws exist to regulate these agencies or call into question their performance.

Pakistan’s premier agencies, the ISI and IB, were formed through executive orders soon after the creation of Pakistan but left without any legislation to govern their actions. At the moment, they function through Standards Operating Procedures (SOPs) that have no legal sanctity hence all actions carried out by them don’t stand the scrutiny of law.

According to sources, former IB DG Dr Shoaib Suddle had taken this initiative with regard to the legislation. He carried out this exercise being IB chief in the early days of Zardari-Gilani government standing out as the first spy chief who volunteered parliamentary oversight drafting a law in this respect after examining the legislation in other democracies. After his departure from the IB, the draft law prepared under his watch went ‘missing’, the sources said.