Surveillance Without Sovereignty: Colonial Afterlives and the Digital State in Pakistan

Pakistan’s adoption of digital surveillance technologies, from biometric identity systems to cybercrime laws, is often portrayed as a sign of modern state capacity, but it reveals something far more unsettling: the erosion of sovereignty and legitimacy in the digital age. These technologies reproduce colonial structures of governance, relying on exclusion, opacity, and coercion rather than democratic consent. Initiatives like the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), and the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency have centralized power under the guise of efficiency and security. However, this is often at the cost of basic rights. For instance, NADRA has routinely been criticized for disenfranchising women, ethnic minorities, and working-class citizens by making identification contingent on bureaucratic validation, rather than citizenship as a right.[1] Similarly, PECA has enabled the criminalization of dissent, with journalists and activists arrested for criticizing the military or government online.[2] These systems do not expand the state’s legitimacy. Rather they substitute coercion for consent, framing citizens as subjects to be watched rather than participants to be heard.[3] The digital turn in governance has not been accompanied by democratic reforms, rights protections, or transparency. This article argues that rather than representing technological modernization, Pakistan’s surveillance-driven governance shows a deepening of its postcolonial crisis, a crisis in which digital tools are used to mask institutional fragility and reproduce the very hierarchies the state claims to transcend.

The digital tools adopted by the Pakistani state, particularly biometric databases, cybercrime and antiterror laws, and surveillance infrastructure, operate less as platforms of governance and more as architectures of suspicion, exclusion, and coercive control. Rather than creating pathways for citizen participation or responsive governance, these technologies have deepened existing inequities by targeting dissent, criminalizing difference, and reducing citizenship to data compliance. The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), for example, has repeatedly come under scrutiny for arbitrarily blocking Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs), particularly among internally displaced persons, transgender communities, and ethnic minorities.[4] Similarly, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) has been used to surveil, arrest, and intimidate journalists, political opponents, and activists, often without due process.[5] These practices show that digital technologies have not replaced repressive state functions. They have digitized and expanded them.[6] When thousands of citizens are rendered stateless by NADRA’s opaque verification protocols, or when journalists face legal action for online criticism, the state’s digital posture reveals itself as punitive rather than protective. Rather than fostering trust, such surveillance regimes communicate a politics of preemption and punishment, treating large segments of the population as threats. Technology becomes a medium through which the state anticipates disloyalty and disciplines behavior.[7] It is not perceived as a means of improving governance. In this configuration, Pakistan’s so-called digital transformation does not modernize or democratize the state. Instead, it entrenches its role as an enforcer of exclusion, reinforcing control over those it already marginalizes.

Pakistan’s digital surveillance apparatus extends the colonial logic of centralized control through new institutional forms. The evolution of cyber governance, particularly through PECA and the creation of the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency (NCCIA),[8] reveals that the inherited governance imperatives are being translated into digital authoritarianism. Under PECA, law enforcement has wielded expansive powers to monitor, investigate, and prosecute individuals for “fake and false information” or online dissent.[9] Meanwhile, the establishment of the NCCIA, a separate entity spun off from the federal investigation agency (FIA), has sought to institutionalize cyber oversight but lacks transparency or democratic accountability.[10] According to free speech advocates, “The purpose of this action appears to be to silence journalists, human rights workers and critics of government policies.”[11] This institutional restructuring underscores the colonial heritage of statecraft: new tools, same logic. Instead of democratizing digital space, Pakistan’s cyber governance continues to prioritize control over consent and opacity over accountability. Acting under the new law, the government banned YouTube channels of some journalists and strengthened repressive tactics.[12] The appeals process set in the Social Media Protection Tribunal also “violates fair trial and due process rights under Article 10 of the Constitution” as only the Supreme Court, and not the High Court, can take up the appeals against the judgment of this new tribunal.[13] The colonial state’s primary concern was not to empower its subjects but to govern them efficiently and suppress resistance. This logic persists in Pakistan’s management of its citizens through opaque databases, unaccountable digital laws, and exceeding the constitutional limits. Thus, what is often framed as an attempt to modernize cyber law and policing is in fact a digital intensification of colonial-style command-and-control. This governance architecture surveils but does not serve and categorizes rather than includes.

A state that governs primarily through surveillance, exclusion, and inherited hierarchies cannot expect genuine allegiance in moments of crisis; it can only demand compliance, often under threat. As Pakistan faces increasing internal instability and the persistent specter of conflict with India, the absence of a meaningful social contract, one built on trust, participation, and care, renders the state dangerously hollow in its claims to sovereignty. Episodes in recent years, such as the internet shutdowns in Balochistan,[14] the state’s aggressive response to digital dissent following the May 2023 political unrest,[15] banning X after criticism of general elections in 2024,[16] highlight how quickly the apparatus of digital control is turned against its own citizens. At the same time, the country’s large and politically aware youth population is increasingly alienated from state institutions, turning instead to online spaces for expression, community, and dissent.  This estrangement between the state and its citizens is not a symptom of technological misuse. It is a structural failure rooted in a refusal to imagine governance beyond domination. The more the state invests in monitoring its people, the more it loses their trust. In this context, calls for national unity or wartime sacrifice ring hollow, especially to a generation that experiences the state primarily as a repressive force, both online and off. True sovereignty requires more than the control of territory or data; it requires legitimacy grounded in the people’s consent. Decolonizing Pakistan’s digital future, then, means not only dismantling inherited structures of control but also designing technological systems that are participatory, transparent, and centered on care rather than coercion. Without such a reorientation, the state’s digital ambitions will continue to mask a deeper crisis: one in which sovereignty is simulated through surveillance, and the people are asked to obey, but never invited to belong.

[1] Nilofer Afridi Qazi, “Identity Blues: Every Citizen Of Pakistan Counts – NADRA Responds,” Diary, The Friday Times, March 23, 2024, https://thefridaytimes.com/23-Mar-2024/nadra-blues-every-citizen-of-pakistan-counts.

[2] International Federation of Journalists, “Pakistan: PECA Amendments Further Tighten Government Grip on Digital Expression,” January 29, 2025, https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/article/pakistan-peca-amendments-further-tighten-government-grip-on-digital-expression.

[3] “Pakistan Hearings on Surveillance, TikTok Worry Digital Rights Advocates,” Voice of America, July 8, 2024, https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-hearings-on-surveillance-tiktok-worry-digital-rights-advocates-/7689948.html.

[4] “More than 71,000 National ID Cards Blocked in Five Years across Country,” News, The Express Tribune, December 12, 2024, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2515529/more-than-71000-cnics-blocked-in-five-years-across-country; Ishaq Tanoli, “Nadra Can’t Block CNIC, Rules SHC,” Pakistan, Dawn, May 2, 2021, https://www.dawn.com/news/1621474; Van Nguyen, “Transcending Binaries for Gender Justice in Pakistan,” UNDP, November 6, 2024, https://www.undp.org/pakistan/blog/transcending-binaries-gender-justice-pakistan.

[5] Usama Khilji, “Throttling Free Speech,” Opinion, Dawn, January 25, 2025, https://www.dawn.com/news/1887528; Peca vs the People, Editorial, May 31, 2025, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1316913-peca-vs-the-people; Farieha Aziz, “Project Peca I: How to Silence a Nation,” Pakistan, Dawn, December 12, 2022, https://www.dawn.com/news/1725805.

[6] Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), “HRCP Calls for Repeal of PECA (Amendment) Act,” May 29, 2025, https://hrcp-web.org/hrcpweb/hrcp-calls-for-repeal-of-peca-amendment-act/.

[7] Irfan Aslam, “UN Rights Body Concerned at Internet/Social Media Blackouts,” Pakistan, Dawn, October 19, 2024, https://www.dawn.com/news/1866106; Imran Gabol, “HRCP Report Shines Light on Selective Curbs on Media,” Pakistan, Dawn, January 24, 2025, https://www.dawn.com/news/1887277.

[8] Naimat Khan, “Pakistan Sets up National Cybercrime Investigation Agency amid Digital Crackdown Concerns,” Arab News, April 22, 2025, https://arab.news/96d3b.

[9] Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), “HRCP Calls for Repeal of PECA (Amendment) Act.”

[10] Bilal Baseer, “Experts Warn New Cyber Crime Agency May Suppress Dissent,” Voicepk.Net, May 6, 2024, https://voicepk.net/2024/05/experts-warn-new-cyber-crime-agency-may-suppress-dissent/; Dr Shahid Hussain Kamboyo, “Cyber Crime Investigation Agency: A Panacea for All Digital Ills,” Opinion & Editorial, The Express Tribune, May 20, 2024, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2467358/cyber-crime-investigation-agency-a-panacea-for-all-digital-ills.

[11] Baseer, “Experts Warn New Cyber Crime Agency May Suppress Dissent.”

[12] “Pakistan’s War on Expression: HRCP Condemns Systemic Silencing of Journalists, Activists,” World, ANI News, July 19, 2025, https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/pakistans-war-on-expression-hrcp-condemns-systemic-silencing-of-journalists-activists20250719144315/.

[13] Khilji, “Throttling Free Speech.”

[14] Nadir Guramani, “Mobile Internet Services Suspended in Certain Areas of Balochistan to ‘Ensure Public Safety’, Says PTA,” Pakistan, Dawn, November 15, 2024, https://www.dawn.com/news/1872566.

[15] “Margins of Dissent for Citizens, Media and Political Parties in Pakistan Erode: Report,” The Express Tribune, April 29, 2024, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2464414/margins-of-dissent-for-citizens-media-and-political-parties-in-pakistan-erode-report-1.

[16] Amnesty International, Pakistan: Civil Society Joint Statement Responding to Network Shutdowns and Platform Blocking, ASA 33/7834/2024 (2024), https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/7834/2024/en/.