Wire tapping: Some foreign missions under surveillance, Senate panel told

IB chief says the individuals in contact with these missions also monitored

ISLAMABAD:

The country’s top civilian intelligence agency told a parliamentary panel on Monday that some ‘foreign diplomatic missions’ and the individuals in contact with them were under surveillance by the intelligence network.

Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director General Aftab Sultan, however, did not disclose the names of the missions while briefing the Senate standing committee on rules and procedures. He was summoned over a complaint of PPP Senator Salim Mandviwala who claimed that his telephone was being tapped by the IB on the ‘orders of the high-ups’.



Senator Mandviwala came up with what he called written evidence suggesting that some IB officials have told him that he was under surveillance of the PML-N government. The DG IB said the document was apparently forged. However, when the committee persevered, he promised to check the veracity of the document with his department.

The committee suggested that the names of the foreign missions under surveillance should be made public so that everyone could know the details. The DG IB clarified that “whatever we do is done in national interest”, a term which the lawmakers said was the main cause for such ‘transgressions’.

The DG IB said his bureau has so far tapped the telephones of over 98% terrorists and sometimes it randomly recorded phones of individuals without getting prior approval from the prime minister.

To a question raised by PPP Senator Raza Rabbani, the DG IB admitted that there was no clear procedure for tapping telephones of individuals. “Rabbani sahib’s concerns are genuine but sometime we do so only in national interest,” he added.

Asked whether he considered parliamentarians as a security threat, the DG IB said he has high regard for all parliamentarians but he could not rule the possibility of tapping their phones. However, he added that the IB kept the prime minister posted on all intelligence operations.



The DG IB also made it clear that his bureau was not solely responsible for phone tapping. The IB is meant to deal with civilians, while the Inter-Services Intelligence keeps defence officials under the radar, he added.

Another official of the IB told the parliamentary panel that the intelligence network was operating under the Telegraphy Rules of 1974. But he, too, confessed that there was no clear mechanism for focusing individuals.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2015.