The challenges in ensuring strong privacy safeguards, proper oversight of surveillance powers, and effective remedy for those arbitrarily affected continued during 2023 in Latin America.
Amidst the Argentinian presidential elections, a thorny surveillance scheme broke in the news.
New revelations reinforced that the Mexican government shift didn't halt the use of Pegasus to spy on human rights defenders, while the trial on Pegasus' abuses in the previous administration has finally begun.
While the challenges cited above are not exclusive to Latin America, it remains an essential task to draw attention to and look at the arbitrary surveillance cases that occasionally emerge, allowing a broader societal scrutiny.
News reports indicate that the system likely exploits the Signaling System n. 7, which is an international telecommunication protocol standard that defines how the network elements in a telephone network exchange information and control signals.
Second, while the Brazilian law indeed lacks strong explicit privacy protections for telephone metadata, the access to real-time location data enjoys a higher standard at least for criminal investigations.
Brazil counts on key constitutional data privacy safeguards and case law that can provide a solid basis to challenge the arbitrary use of tools like First Mile.
Vice News unveiled that Mexican cartels are allegedly piggy-backing police's use of this system to track and target their enemies.
Various news reports suggest how the former police officer's spying services relate to his possible political ties.
DIGIMIN has assured the news site that the agency didn't purchase any of the tools that Duality Alliance offered.
Recent Mexican experience shows the challenges of putting an end to the arbitrary use of spywares.
Despite major public outcry against the use of Pegasus by security forces to track journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents, among others, and President López Obrador's public commitment to halt these abuses, the issue continues.
New evidence of Mexican Armed Forces' spying during Obrador's administration burst into the media in 2023.
The kick-off of the trial on the Mexican Pegasus case is definitely good news.
On a final but equally important note, The New York Times published that the Mexico City's Attorney General's Office and prosecutors in the state of Colima issued controversial data requests to the Mexican telecom company Telcel targeting politicians and public officials.
According to The New York Times, Mexico City's AGO denied having requested that information, although other sources confirmed.
R3D highlighted how the case relates to deep-seated issues, such as the obligation for indiscriminate telecom data retention set in Mexican law and the lack of adequate safeguards to prevent and punish the arbitrary access to metadata by law enforcement.
Despite advances, our conclusions show persistent gaps and new concerning trends closely connected to the set of issues this post indicates.
Among others, we collaborated with partners in Brazil on a draft proposal for ensuring data protection in the context of public security and law enforcement, spoke to Mexican lawmakers about how cybersecurity and strong data privacy rights go hand in hand, and joined policy debates upholding solid data privacy standards.
We will keep monitoring Latin America privacy's ups and downs, and contribute to turning the recurring lessons from arbitrary surveillance cases into consistent responses towards robust data privacy and security for all.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Mon, 25 Dec 2023 18:13:04 +0000