Islamabad : To avoid the wrath of the court , Shahbaz Sharif government on Tuesday legally protected tapping of the calls and interfering of the messages by intelligence agencies for ‘The sake of national security”. The Shahbaz rule got approval of the summary meant to authorise Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to tap telephone calls and intercept messages as and when needed for security check in “The national interest “. One of the purposes of having approved the summary by the federal cabinet through circulation is to dodge the court whose judge had summoned Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) chief , Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and top officials of various related departments a couple of weeks ago and warned them of action for illegally tapping telephone calls and intercepting messages in Bushra Bibi case . Justice Babar Sattar of Islamabad High Court (IHC) had sought the names and officials’ status of the authority which he observed was involved in tapping of telephone calls of ex first lady Bushra Bibi . The judge had fixed the case of tapping of calls and messages of Bushra Bibi for July 20 ,2024. After getting permission from the government the concerned officials will have authority to present the new legal cover in their protection to the court when it assembles for the next hearing in the case of ex- first lady’s phone tapping. Tuesday ‘s notification permitting ISI to tap phone calls and intercept messages also has a message for the judiciary that it has more than one options to carry out its business as usual . Although Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) has announced to challenge the notification permitting tapping of the phone calls , but it may have very little justification to fight the case in the court of law as its government was doing the same practice in its 4-year rule. Defence minister , Khawaja Asif ‘s chiding to PTI on Tuesday in a TV show reminds of good old days when, according to Khawaja Asif , PTI founder , Imran Khan used to count benefits of phone tapping in his rule. Pakistan is fighting a deadly fight against terror and in such circumstances intelligence agencies need authority to tap telephone calls and also intercept messages to preempt terror activities. Even agencies in the US and UK have the similar permissions and their agencies operate without any threat of action from the court.
