http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/l
a-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 latimes.com
Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico
City Bureau and Times staff writer Henry Weinstein in Los
Angeles contributed to this report.
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