New Delhi, March 5 (AHN) Pakistan’s Safe City projects have evolved from being anti‑terrorism measures to an infrastructure of daily surveillance of its population in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi, a report has said.

The report from Human Rights Research Center said networked surveillance cameras, biometric interfaces and central command centres now form the backbone of urban policing.

"Facial recognition links national ID databases with real-time tracking, which makes it possible to identify a person and map their movements at any moment in time," the report noted.

It report argued that Pakistan's daily surveillance system largely functions without any actual legal or constitutional challenge, the report further said.

Although surveillance is regulated by the constitutional and international standards, Pakistan lacks a unified law on data protection or an independent body to monitor the process of data collection and utilisation.

"Proposed data protection bills have been in circulation over the years, but practically, there is no legal framework in place on how biometric data, facial images, or location history collected under the Safe City systems could be stored, shared, or challenged," it flagged.

Safe City Authorities operate under administrative laws and executive orders, but these lack regulations to define when intrusive surveillance may lawfully occur, the report further said.

The report also flagged lack of publicly available guidelines to determine when facial recognition is allowed, or when protests and political gatherings are legally allowed to be tracked, making it based on police discretion.

Such a practice has a "chilling effect on freedom of assembly" and "kills freedom of speech," it warned.

Several reports have recently flagged elite capture of Pakistan's government, its tax narrowness, energy inefficiency, and a brittle economy.

Analysts said half‑hearted reforms could leave average annual GDP growth hovering around 2–3 per cent over the next five years, barely above population growth, amounting to stagnation.

—AHN

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