LA Times: US funds super wiretap system for Mexico

[Eugen Leitl]

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From: John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:56:56 -0700 To:
cryptography at metzdowd.com, gnu at toad.com Subject: LA Times: US funds super
wiretap system for Mexico

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico25may25,0,7011563.story?coll=la-home-center

Mexico to boost tapping of phones and e-mail with U.S. aid

Calderon is seeking to expand monitoring of drug gangs; Washington also may
have access to the data.

By Sam Enriquez, Times Staff Writer

May 25, 2007

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is expanding its ability to tap telephone calls and
e-mail using money from the U.S. government, a move that underlines how the
country's conservative government is increasingly willing to cooperate with
the United States on law enforcement.

The expansion comes as President Felipe Calderon is pushing to amend the
Mexican Constitution to allow officials to tap phones without a judge's
approval in some cases. Calderon argues that the government needs the
authority to combat drug gangs, which have killed hundreds of people this
year.

Mexican authorities for years have been able to wiretap most telephone
conversations and tap into e-mail, but the new $3-million Communications
Intercept System being installed by Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency
will expand their reach.

The system will allow authorities to track cellphone users as they travel,
according to contract specifications. It includes extensive storage capacity
and will allow authorities to identify callers by voice. The system,
scheduled to begin operation this month, was paid for by the U.S. State
Department and sold by Verint Systems Inc., a politically well-connected firm
based in Melville, N.Y., that specializes in electronic surveillance.

Although information about the system is publicly available, the matter has
drawn little attention so far in the United States or Mexico. The
modernization program is described in U.S. government documents, including
the contract specifications, reviewed by The Times.

They suggest that Washington could have access to information derived from
the surveillance. Officials of both governments declined to comment on that
possibility.

"It is a government of Mexico operation funded by the U.S.," said Susan
Pittman, of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs. Queries should be directed to the Mexican government,
she said.

Calderon's office declined to comment.

But the contract specifications say the system is designed to allow both
governments to "disseminate timely and accurate, actionable information to
each country's respective federal, state, local, private and international
partners."

Calderon has been lobbying for more authority to use electronic surveillance
against drug violence, which has threatened his ability to govern. Despite
federal troops posted in nine Mexican states, the violence continues as rival
smugglers fight over shipping routes to the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as
for control of Mexican port cities and inland marijuana and poppy growing
regions.

Nonetheless, the prospect of U.S. involvement in surveillance could be
extremely sensitive in Mexico, where the United States historically has been
viewed by many as a bullying and intrusive neighbor. U.S. government agents
working in Mexico maintain a low profile to spare their government hosts any
political fallout.

It's unclear how broad a net the new surveillance system will cast: Mexicans
speak regularly by phone, for example, with millions of relatives living in
the U.S. Those conversations appear to be fair game for both governments.

Legal experts say that prosecutors with access to Mexican wiretaps could use
the information in U.S. courts. U.S. Supreme Court decisions have held that
4th Amendment protections against illegal wiretaps do not apply outside the
United States, particularly if the surveillance is conducted by another
country, Georgetown University law professor David Cole said.

Mexico's telecommunications monopoly, Telmex, controlled by Carlos Slim Helu,
the world's second-wealthiest individual, has not received official notice of
the new system, which will intercept its electronic signals, a spokeswoman
said this week.

"Telmex is a firm that always complies with laws and rules set by the Mexican
government," she said.

Calderon recently asked Mexico's Congress to amend the country's constitution
and allow federal prosecutors free rein to conduct searches and secretly
record conversations among people suspected of what the government defines as
serious crimes.

His proposal would eliminate the current legal requirement that prosecutors
gain approval from a judge before installing any wiretap, the vetting process
that will for now govern use of the new system's intercepts. Calderon says
the legal changes are needed to turn the tide in the battle against the drug
gangs.

"The purpose is to create swift investigative measures against organized
crime," Calderon wrote senators when introducing his proposed constitutional
amendments in March. "At times, turning to judicial authorities hinders or
makes investigations impossible."

But others argued that the proposed changes would undermine constitutional
protections and open the door to the type of domestic spying that has plagued
many Latin American countries. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe last week
ousted a dozen generals, including the head of intelligence, after police
were found to be wiretapping public figures, including members of his
government.

"Calderon's proposal is limited to 'urgent cases' and organized crime, but
the problem is that when the judiciary has been put out of the loop, the
attorney general can basically decide these however he wants to," said John
Ackerman, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
"Without the intervention of a judge, the door swings wide open to widespread
abuse of basic civil liberties."

The proposal is being considered by a panel of the Mexican Senate. It is
strongly opposed by members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
Members of Calderon's National Action Party have been lobbying senators from
the former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, for support.

Renato Sales, a former deputy prosecutor for Mexico City, said Calderon's
desire to expand federal policing powers to combat organized crime was
parallel to the Bush administration's use of a secret wiretapping program to
fight terrorism.

"Suddenly anyone suspected of organized crime is presumed guilty and treated
as someone without any constitutional rights," said Sales, now a law
professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "And who will
determine who is an organized crime suspect? The state will."

Federal lawmaker Cesar Octavio Camacho, president of the justice and human
rights commission in the lower house of Congress, said he too worried about
prosecutorial abuse.

"Although the proposal stems from the president's noble intention of
efficiently fighting organized crime," he said, "the remedy seems worse than
the problem."

sam.enriquez at latimes.com

Carlos Martmnez and Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau and
Times staff writer Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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