Pakistan to launch home-grown messaging app amid internet disruptions

Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani government is set to roll out “Beep Pakistan”, a communication application designed for federal officials and employees. Its one request? Please don’t compare it to popular messaging platform WhatsApp.

Shaza Fatima Khwaja, the state minister for information technology and telecommunication, said that the application was currently undergoing trial runs within her ministry and would be launched “soon” among other government departments.

“We have developed an application focused on secure and unified communication among government officials. The purpose of Beep Pakistan is to protect our privacy and data,” she told Al Jazeera.

When in August 2023, the then-Minister of IT Syed Aminul Haque first revealed plans for the new app, he described it as Pakistan’s alternative to WhatsApp. Now though, the government is distancing itself from that comparison.

“Any comparison to WhatsApp is misplaced, as there is no intention to compete with any third-party platform,” Khwaja said.

The government’s announcement comes at a time when Pakistanis have been facing numerous disruptions while using the internet.

In April, the government confirmed that the social media platform X had been banned since February due to “security threats”.

In recent months, users have lodged complaints with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country’s top telecom regulator, about internet throttling and, earlier this month, reported difficulties in accessing multimedia content on WhatsApp such as images, documents and voice notes. Information minister Attaullah Tarar, however, denied any problems being faced, saying that it was part of the global technology outage earlier this month.

Earlier in February, mobile data services were suspended on the day of the country’s elections as well.

Concerns about WhatsApp’s security features — or the lack of them — have also long swirled within the Pakistani government, particularly after reports emerged in December 2019 that at least two dozen senior officials were targeted by Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO.

At that time, the Pakistani government issued a notification instructing officials to avoid sending sensitive and confidential documents via WhatsApp and announced plans to develop a local communication app to ensure security.

Khwaja, the IT minister, said that the new app would help ensure “data privacy and protection” in government communications. She said that while it would be launched within government departments soon, “the design of the application is robust enough to offer it to the general citizens of Pakistan at later stages, if desired”.

But she denied any future plans to block WhatsApp in Pakistan, describing such fears as “unnecessary exaggerations”.

“The focus of Beep Pakistan is to provide secure communication to the government, and comparisons with other commercial applications are irrelevant,” she said. “Beep will be an official platform for government communication. For personal communication, citizens may choose whatever platform they want, as long as it is not illegal.”

Babar Majid Bhatti, the chief executive of the National Information Technology Board (NITB), the government organisation tasked with developing the application, also insisted that Beep Pakistan should not be compared to WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp is a commercial product, whereas Beep Pakistan is an official, unified secure platform. Their purposes and objectives are different,” he told Al Jazeera.

But Haque, the former minister who oversaw the start of the work on the app, pointed to a more strategic rationale too for the initiative.

Haque, who now heads the National Assembly’s Standing Committee On Information Technology, said that the idea behind launching the application was to ensure Pakistan has what China and the United States have: a homegrown messaging app.

“This is an entirely made-in-Pakistan product. Just like how China has WeChat for their users, or how users have WhatsApp in the United States, we wanted something similar for Pakistan so that is where Beep comes in,” he told Al Jazeera.

Bhatti of the NITB said that the app was developed with the help of Pakistani developers from the private sector but did not disclose further details regarding the safety features or the cost of development.

“The fundamental pillar of any application, particularly Beep Pakistan, is its safety and security, and I assure you that this application includes all necessary layers, including encryption,” he stated.

However, according to Beep Pakistan’s privacy policy, the application will collect various information about the device used to access it, such as location, connection information, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, among other data.

The privacy policy further states that this information will be stored on local servers at the National Telecom Corporation (NTC), the official telecom and information communications technology provider to the government of Pakistan.

“The Beep will not share, rent, or sell your personal information to other parties, as the information is only stored on NTC local servers,” the privacy policy states, also noting that it would be legally obligated to disclose relevant personal information if required by law.

The NTC has previously been the target of hacking attempts, with the latest attack occurring in May 2022, when some government websites were suspended for several hours. However, the government clarified that the data centres remained unaffected.

In August 2016, the US-based media organisation, The Intercept, reported that the United States had hacked into NTC servers to spy on Pakistan’s political and military leadership.

Digital rights activists remain wary of the digital safeguards in place for the app.

“One of the greatest vulnerabilities of government apps is the exposure of sensitive user data through unsecured data or app assets,” Ramsha Jahangir, a digital rights expert, told Al Jazeera. According to Beep’s privacy policy, they will collect sensitive personal information, including links to social media. How can its safety and security be assured?”

Experts also point to instances of other countries that have attempted ambitious, locally-made messaging apps. Koo, an X-like social media platform, was developed in India in 2020 and received a grant from an Indian government initiative. Though a private project, it was endorsed by senior leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, who moved to the platform at a time when New Delhi was locked in a tussle with Twitter — as X was then called. The Indian government had demanded that Twitter block a list of accounts critical of the Modi administration.

However, Koo shut down earlier this month due to a lack of funding.

“We have seen local solutions like Koo struggle in the past. Building an app requires significant technical expertise, time, consistency and resources,” Jahangir said.

Fundamentally, she said, “local ‘solutions’ should prioritise respecting users’ privacy rather than merely increasing government power over the private sector”.