Happy to be spied upon..

..till you’re not

Few can find fault with PTI chief Imran Khan’s expression of concerns at the recent – and ongoing – series of audio leaks, purportedly from both the PM House and the PM Secretariat. “As PM my secure line at my residence was also bugged,” he exclaimed in the tweet from his official account.

These are very valid concerns. If such sensitive data can be leaked from what is supposed to be the highest office in the land, one wonders how compromised the rest of our official sensitive government correspondence will be.

There are, however, some points that need to be talked about before this issue is meaningfully addressed. The former PM had, in an interview not so long ago, said that not only did he know that all his communication was being listened in on by the intelligence agencies, but also that he approved of it. The hapless television anchor who was conducting the interview spoke of the impropriety, even illegality of this practice, but the then prime minister dug in his heels and repeated his approval of the same.

Though the former premier has only spoken of his own tenure, by implication, he also condemns the leaks from the office of his successor as well. He needs to be more vocal about this. And the government also needs to point this out, instead of gloating every time a compromising audio of the former ruling party is leaked.

The political class needs to realise that they are all in this together. Politics is by its very nature adversarial; that is how the process has been designed and there is nothing wrong with that. But that, unfortunately, creates a situation where, as opposed to the military, the civil service, or even the news media, there is no common ground to rally around. Developed and mature democracies, however, do see the sparring political parties converge on some minimum common agendas, some non-negotiables.

At the moment, it is not quite clear where the leaks are originating from. Yes, there appears to have been a hack, but it is a database where such recordings were stored in the first place that was hacked. Why were they recorded at all?

The need of the hour is for there to be a consensus against such illicit practices and for any sitting government not to take such encroachments lying down.

Editorial
Editorial
The Editorial Department of Pakistan Today can be contacted at: [email protected].

Must Read