[SynthethicalY]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-center


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."

[Everyneurotic]

the city government is tapping and recording conversations left and right already, nothing new.

[!@#$%!]

ha ha, the mexican government has been notoriously corrupt since its inception. obviously90% of all this will go towards political warfare, and whatever drug dealers have the politicians in their pockets will be able to listen in on the competition & kill them quicker.

these police pipe dreams crack me up (pun intended).

[Everyneurotic]

also, the anti drug war has been very public lately, it might have to do with psychological terror towards the narcos.

but yeah, everything is done for the elections.

[atari 2600]

U.S. Helping Mexico SPy on its Citizen

who's the citizen?

which citizen?



so they are cooperating more openly now...which is to say, "more brazenly." Thing is, the world has so many fucking problems that it's a wild west party for politicians now.
No one can even keep up to address all the corruption anymore. It's out-of-control. But, the bottom line is that it's the ignorant, apathetic citizenry that allow this shit to go on who are to blame.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

U.S. Helping Mexico SPy on its Citizen

who's the citizen?

which citizen?



dumbass

dumbness scale:

lack of social skills >> innocent typo

[atari 2600]

blow it out your ass

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

blow it out your ass

with chunks? in your general direction?

i got your rep. heee heee.

 

but seriously, your ridiculousness knows no bounds.





cracker.

[atari 2600]

So, I see your grand plan is to try to bait me into countering with a racist epithet. And to what end, no one knows.

I promised "no mercy" privately, so sorry to disappoint, but one must draw the line somewhere.

At the very least, your hate message is clear by once again calling me a "cracker."

Any thinking person can plainly see you are a consummate pseudointellectual.
but seriously, your phoniness knows no bounds.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

So, I see your grand plan is to try to bait me into countering with a racist epithet. And to what end, no one knows.

Sorry to disappoint, but my rage has to draw the line somewhere.

At the very least, your hate message is clear by once again calling me a "cracker."

Any thinking person can plainly see you are a consummate pseudointellectual.
but seriously, your phoniness knows no bounds.

hm yeah, did i call you a cracker before?

i have no problem with your race.

i do have a bit of a problem with the english language, as some words often elude me, not having grown up with them.

i've often meant to say you're cracked-- i do believe you're cracked. as in the head.

anyway, it's been a long day of work and im tired, but yes im a pseudointellectual. i am not an intellectual. i was training for the job of intellectual and i quit. i don't think anybody who posts here is an "intellectual". intellectuals are busy writing books.

anyway, no racial epithet meant, and for that i apologize.

but your silly "rep" is still ridiculous. "show no mercy"-- ha ha haha ha.

you have no problem calling people dumbass for a typo though.

no mercy! no mercy!

ha ha ha.

grow up.

have a good night.

[SynthethicalY]

I wonder who will they spy on first?

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by SyntheticallY

I wonder who will they spy on first?

Well, as we know, the major telecommunications corporations were all pressured by the White House post-9/11 to start recording calls until all or most (not sure) were compliant.

Now, as the news slowly seeped out this was going on, and due to the constitutional issues it raises, we the public, learned a bit more.

We were told that the monitoring was due to Homeland Security as a way to counter terrorist activity within the United States.

Most, naturally, and out of their fear, accepted this logical explanation for a sacrifice of part of our freedoms.
Besides, everyone has a general malaise and believes we've lost control over our representation and our government, so it's easier to lie to oneself and just blindly trust the governement than to think about what's really happening because, that after all, is only going to make you uncomfortable and unable to fulfill your duties as a slave to the system, and it might just serve to drive you crazy to dwell on the naked truth too much, right?

Now, to get back to the subject, the method by which these monitored calls would help intelligence agencies and law enforcement fight terrorism has, to my knowledge, never been explained and expounded upon to the general public, at least. I suppose that would be letting the terrorists know too many of our supposed secrets haha.

So, that leads us to a point in this reasonable step-by-step analysis of a case in which the government spies on its citizens where we must start to engage in conjecture. The speculation we are embarking on has to do with the nature of how the monitoring network actually is supposed to work and function. Because therein lies the shadow of the truth, you see.

Reportedly, monitoring began on 9/12/01, the day after the tragedy when we here in the United States were horrifically attacked on continental soil. Somewhat ironically, 9/12 was also the day bin Laden relatives begain being jetted out of the country by secret executive (presidential/vice-presidential) order while all other flights were grounded. But, forgive me for straying from the point.

Since montitoring began, it has indeed led to the successful apprehension of legitimate potential terrorists. Then again, the spying is also allegedly responsible, as many know from the alternative media, for the false arrests of far too many an individual and some of these are rather bizarre cases with seemingly no rhyme or reason. At any rate, before I begin to really get to my point here, I'd like to relate about how terrorists in Los Angeles were arrested and found guilty because some chatter was picked up after the death of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. The police went in and searched an apartment when the suspects were not home and confirmed their valid suspicions with the literature, weapons, and bomb-making substances that were confiscated. Here we have a success story. A reason to not be afraid of the monitoring because, hey, the monitoring gets results, right? Desperate times call for desperate measures and so on, right?
No, no--wrong, wrong. In the area those particular arrests were made, there has been a lot of monitoring going on since Bush, Sr. authorized all those types of activity by permission of court order. He did that in 1991. The difference between Bush, Sr. and Jr.'s regime, is that now, no court order is required. Gotta protect, you see, haha at any cost.

Anyone with any sense in their head (any sense of patriotism as well) knows the constitution also needs protecting. Besides, any rube can also know deep in their bones that it's a simple invasion of privacy. Racial profiling also raises valid ethical questions. Where does one strike a balance then?

But, damn me, I still haven't gotten around to my point...
And that point is the method of the gathering of some sort of data that supposedly catches terrorists. The common view holds that there is a network in place that scans for code words. Words like "bomb." This is not science-fiction entirely as systems like this were, I believe, first developed in Britain (as Orwell rolled over in his grave, no doubt) some time ago. Anyway, anyone that's not an idiot (interjection of my opinion) should know that there's no possible way to monitor all the calls that get recorded. At best, maybe the same type of system that detects the word "bomb" (& a few variations on that theme) could, I suppose, be adapted to pick up any chatter in Arabic languages. Personally, I think it's all bullshit. There's no possible way to effectively monitor any kind of significant percentage of all the telecommunications activity in this country. It's simply not possible for people or machines to carry out that type of task. If you believe otherwise, I'd like to hear why.

Personally, I think that the main reason that monitoring began is so that the government could spy on leftist groups, and that they could finally do so without fear of reprisal really. It's Nixon's revenge from beyond the grave hehe. There has been evidence to support this assertion. Now, to elucidate a bit further, the government, for many reasons that should be obvious, has much vested interest in monitoring so-called "leftist" groups because they consider them a threat to exposing their lies, corruption, and abominable misdeeds. In today's information age, the power that small media and policital groups have and the word-of-mouth that can be engendered is a political force that genteel politicians have to reckon with. The monitoring also affords the government a handy-dandy databank to use against anyone or any group that it deems a threat. If they start to get annoyed with you, they'll just pull and actually really listen to your phone records until they find some dirt on you or an angle to work, you see. At this point, I will guess that the "databank" of recorded info is not all that comprehensive, that there are major kinks to still sort out, but I'm sure it's a major priority to get it all up and running and recording as much of everything as possible in the near future. And this will certainly happen unless a course of action is followed soon to disallow this reprehensible practice that is extremely dangerous to our our way of life, democracy and freedom which are the very virtues we are supposed to be protecting.

But, while dastardly benefits can be gleaned by a tyrannical government spying on its citizenry like some potential future day mega-Gestapo, it now alarmingly has been seemingly just accepted, and it's yet another bad rationalization the American people got force-fed after 9/11. While it should be readily apparent that the (in the beginning) secret monitoring began to keep tabs on those organizations that held dissenting views, it also served a specific purpose at the time of its initial inception.

Monitoring began so the government could spy on leftist groups, yes, and the principal telecommunications activity that the government set out from the beginning to monitor was not the activity of Muslim terrorists as they claim, it was American activists (and possibly American terrorists) they were worried about that might be planning to terminate the terms of the (in their mind) treasonous Bush or Cheney and take them out by non-violent, or possibly even violent, means.

And there you have it. Sorry it took me so very long to get there.