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Pakistan building digital espionage capacity to rival the US

Yeah, its possible. Using western technology and equipment to rival the western system:partay:. Why in the world would i trust and buy from a western vendor company. A small and easy example would be lenovo's super fish. Equation malware would be good example to understand how deep hardware has been compromised. A virus in HDD firmware is real, what’s next? | Kaspersky Lab Official Blog

Would not be surprised if CIA inserted themselves as trojan into ISI digital spying system. Nothing beats humint :-), human mind is an unsolvable riddle.
 
Why in the world would i trust and buy from a western vendor company. A small and easy example would be lenovo's super fish.

I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, but Lenovo isn't a Western company, it's Chinese but has a presence in the US in North Carolina. Superfish wasn't a US endeavor, at least not in this instance.

Superfish software comes from a US company in Palo Alto, but the decision to pre-load it onto Lenovo computers didn't.

Would not be surprised if CIA inserted themselves as trojan into ISI digital spying system.

CIA moles in ISI ranks, NSA software in their computers, NGA monitoring progress on CPEC and Gwadar usage, NRO eavesdropping on everything else, Jimmy might even be in the area gathering intel for ONI or the NSA (Jimmy Carter)... but let's not limit this to Pakistan. The US means this (the below patch), they even spy on NATO partners.

Heck, maybe even some ground assets involved in a bit of Red/Black - @SvenSvensonov 's been kind enough to explain that.

EMSEC - What is it?

Principles of EMSEC - Side Channel Analysis: How we side-step encryption

Soft TEMPEST - electronic eavsdropping

Take this literally, it's how the US feels:
yhst-23314603045573_2149_1381814105.jpg


ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s intelligence agency sought to tap worldwide Internet traffic via underwater cables that would have given the country a digital espionage capacity to rival the US, according to a report by Privacy International.
:-):yahoo::pakistan::yahoo::-)
The report says the country’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency hired intermediary companies to acquire domestic spying toolkits from Western and Chinese firms for domestic surveillance.

It also claims the ISI sought access to tap data from three of the four “landing sites” that pass through the country’s port city of Karachi, effectively giving it access to Internet traffic worldwide.

akistan was in talks with a European company in 2013 to acquire the technology but it is not clear whether the deal went through – a fact the rights organisation said was troubling.
“These cables are going to route data through various countries and regions,” Matthew Rice, an advocacy officer for Privacy International, told AFP.

“Some will go from Europe to Africa and all the way to Southeast Asia. From my reading that’s an explicit attempt to look at what’s going on.”

Traffic from North America and regional rival India would also be routed via the cables, he said.

The report, based on what it called previously unpublished confidential documents, said the data collection sought in the ISI’s proposal “would rival some of the world’s most powerful surveillance programmes” including those of the United States and Britain.

A spokesman for Pakistan’s military said he was not able to comment on the issue at the present time.

Last month Pakistani rights campaigners and opposition lawmakers urged Islamabad to protect the privacy of its citizens after leaked top-secret documents appeared to show British intelligence had gained access to almost all the country’s Internet users.

The country is also in the process of debating its own cyber-crime bill, which rights campaigners say threatens to curtail freedom of expression and privacy in its current form.

Rights groups also expressed concern over a provision that allows the government to share intelligence with foreign spy agencies, such as the American National Security Agency, and the mandating of service providers to retain telephone and email records for up to a year.

Source: The Express Tribune
July 23, 2015

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آئی ایس آئی کا وہ منصوبہ جس نے امریکہ و برطانیہ کی نیندیں اڑادیں۔
پاکستان کی قوم کا سر فخر سے بلند کردیا۔​

Given US electronic intelligence comes from the NGA (satellites and support personel), NRO (satellites, manned and unmanned aircraft, ground stations), NSA (hard and software, ground stations, satellites), and also ONI (all-aspect USN assets - submarines, satellites, ground stations, persons, etc.) and other military agencies, I think the title might be a bit of an exaggeration in its scope.

Good for Pakistan though, they need this capability to monitor the comms of militants, and keep their foreign concerns honest.

Still, it's a bit exaggerated, yes? Everyone has to start somewhere, but there is much, much to do before you reach the US' level. And we haven't even mentioned cooperative NATO programs or the Five Eyes agreement.
 
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