The surveillance software inside Islamabad’s Safe City network for more than a year is now under public scrutiny over Israel ties allegations.
The debate about the nature of software began as a X discourse where people took to express their opinions about the Safe City software. The allegations started brewing about the Israeli-nature of the software, but nothing was confirmed.
I heard the safe city cam in Islamabad had software called Briefcam packaged into the bundle. An Israeli software that was being used to analyse video feeds from any chosen camera overseeing Islamabad. If that is then we are being watched for years https://t.co/9LprBZ81HM
— Ayaz Khan (@azzkhann) March 3, 2026
— maisamhassan (@maisamhassan11) March 3, 2026
Upon digging through, TechJuice came across an Islamabad Traffic Police officer, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, explained that the Israeli BriefCam software was indeed operational within the Islamabad Safe City system a few years ago. As per the source, the surveillance system was in place from June 2021 to October 2022, utilizing a technology was previously used to monitor Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.
However, it was later replaced by a platform called Extreme C, which possesses full facial recognition capability. The Safe City cameras are now equipped with Huawei hardware, and the network has been linked to NADRA now, which holds the biometric identity records of virtually every Pakistani citizen.
BriefCam was founded in 2007 based on technology developed at Israel’s Hebrew University. It provides video analytics tools that allow law enforcement to compress, search, and analyse hours of CCTV footage, and includes facial recognition and licence-plate search capabilities. Canon Inc. acquired the company in 2018, though it continues to operate from Modi’in, Israel.
A public tender from the Israeli Ministry of Housing and Construction shows that authorities use BriefCam’s software to monitor 98 sites in Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem. A May 2023 Amnesty International report also documented the software’s role in maintaining surveillance over Palestinians.
In Islamabad, the software was used to identify suspects in criminal investigations, read vehicle number plates, and issue e-challans for traffic violations. The NADRA link deepened its reach considerably.
Safe City authorities forwarded a list of over 4,000 wanted persons, identified by CNIC number, to NADRA for matching against its facial recognition database. NADRA’s then-chairman confirmed receiving the request, noting it required careful legal consideration.
Since October 2022, the network has run Extreme C, a system with real-time facial recognition that represents a significant upgrade in surveillance power over what BriefCam provided. No public announcement accompanied either the adoption of BriefCam in 2021 or its replacement in 2022.
The revelations land at a particularly sensitive moment, with anti-Israel sentiment running high across Pakistan following the US-Israeli strikes in Iran.
Whether proper legal authorization existed for deploying Israeli-origin software to monitor Pakistani citizens, without parliamentary oversight or public disclosure, remains an entirely unanswered question.
