ISLAMABAD — (AP) — Pakistani engineers have developed and successfully tested a government messaging app for secure communication among officials, authorities said Tuesday, even as Islamabad restricts social media use and regularly shuts down internet and mobile phone networks to prevent dissent.
Should the government approve it, the messaging platform could eventually also be available to millions of citizens, said Baber Majid, chief executive officer at the country’s National Information Technology Board.
Enter “beep,” a chat application that Pakistani authorities say is exclusively homegrown.
“Beep has already successfully undergone trial runs since 2023 and is now ready for launch,” Majid said.
Meanwhile, ordinary Pakistanis have been struggling to access the social networking platform X, which authorities blocked ahead of the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections earlier this year, a vote overshadowed by violence, an unprecedented national shutdown of all mobile phone services and allegations of vote rigging.
Authorities later insisted that the phone service suspension was necessary for security reasons, but critics and Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran …