Communications Intercept System

Mexican Wiretapping Program Funded by the United States

May 29, 2007

The State Department recently provided the administration of Mexico with a new phone and email tapping system with the collected information shared between the two.

The new Mexican administration of Felipe Calderon is expanding the government’s ability to tap phone calls and email using money from the United States’ State Department.

The new system has the capacity for voice recognition and geographically track the location of cell phone users, reported the LA Times.

This move is part of Calderon’s campaign to combat drug trafficking gangs, particularly in northern Mexico, which has recently cost the lives of gang members, police officers, military personnel, and even civilians.

The LA Time reported the Calderon administration is pushing to amend the Mexican constitution to allow officials to tap phone without a judge’s permission.

“The purpose is to create swift investigative measures against organized crime,” wrote Calderon. “At times, turning to judicial authorities hinders or makes investigation impossible.”

There is concern from leftist senators and many civil rights activists this new $3 million dollar system will be abused without judicial approval.

The Times reported that after examining US government documents and contract agreements, part of the agreement was to make any information collected in Mexico accessible to the US. Data, which in the US would be impossible to gather because of privacy laws, would then be fed into TIDE, the terrorist identity datamart environment, where organizations ranging from the FBI, TSA, and local law officials could access this information.

The contract specifies the Communications Intercept System is designed to “disseminate timely and accurate, actionable information to each country’s respective federal, state, local, private and international partners.”

With many families with members in both Mexico and the United States, any phone conversations, including those across international borders, would be subject to wire tapping from the Mexican side of the border and the information collected would be passed to the United States.

U.S. Supreme Courts have decided that 4th Amendment protections against illegal wiretaps are upheld when done outside of the United States, Georgetown University law professor David Cole told the Times.

Many features of this system are similar to the recommendations made in the Department of Defense’s Information Operations Roadmap to consolidate information, improve dissemination, and increase collection capacities as part of the international war on terror.

Many in Mexico do not believe this is a move to increase global security, but to increase the United States' control of Mexican politics. In an interview with Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, director of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Center of Human Rights, Isabel Uriate said that this system of espionage hands over individual rights of Mexican privacy to the United States and further increases the annexation of Mexico.

The American media has been nearly silent about the move.