Under the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s directives, the intelligence services are deploying secretive surveillance technology normally used to locate militants to instead track coronavirus patients and the people they come into contact with.
As announced by the Prime Minister earlier, the federal government has turned to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for help in tackling the virus, which still is spreading at an accelerating rate across Pakistan.
While the details of the project are yet to disclose, the intelligence services are reported to be using geo-fencing and phone-monitoring systems that ordinarily are employed to hunt high-value targets including homegrown and foreign militants.
“The trace-and-track system basically helps us track the mobile phones of corona patients as well as anyone they get in touch with before of after their disappearance,” a senior intelligence official told the AFP.
He further said that the government has been successful in tracing even those who tested positive but went into hiding out of lack of awareness and fear of stigmatization.
