Despite President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's pledge to end such practices, the Mexican government or army is said to have continued to use spyware designed to hack into activists' cellphones.
As per press freedom groups, they discovered evidence of recent attempts to use the Israeli spyware programme Pegasus against activists investigating human rights violations by the Mexican army. A forensic investigation by the University of Toronto group Citizen Lab confirmed the Pegasus infection.
The targets included rights activist, Raymundo Ramos, according to a report by the press freedom group Article 19, The Network for the Defense of Digital Rights, and Mexican media organisations. Ramos has spent years documenting military and police abuses, including multiple killings, in Nuevo Laredo, a drug cartel-dominated border city. In 2020, Ramos' cellphone was apparently infected with Pesgasus spyware.
“They do not like us documenting these types of cases, for them to be made public and have criminal complaints filed,” Ramos said.
Other victims in 2019 and 2020 included journalist and author Ricardo Raphael and an unnamed journalist for the online media outlet Animal Politico.
According to Daniel Moreno, director of Animal Politico, "if the president didn't know, that is very serious because it means the army was spying on him without his consent." If the president was aware, it would be extremely serious."
López Obrador took office in December 2018 with the promise of ending government spying. The president claimed that as an opposition leader, he had been subjected to government surveillance for decades. Lopez Obrador said in 2019, in response to questions about the use of Pegasus, “We are not involved in that. Here we have decided not to go after anybody. Before, when we were in the opposition, we were spied on.”
According to the report, the Mexican army requested price quotes for surveillance programmes from companies involved in the distribution of Pegasus, which the company claims is only sold to governments. The hacker group Guacamaya discovered army documents containing requests for price quotes from 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Because of the nature of their work and the timing of the espionage, the victims of the spyware attacks assumed the military was to blame. Leopoldo Maldonado, the director of Article 19, stated, “All of this indicates two possible scenarios: the first, that the president lied to the people of Mexico. The second is that the armed forces are spying behind the president’s back, disobeying the orders of their commander in chief.”
When reached for comment, a spokesman for Mexico's Defense Department stated that there was no immediate response to the allegations. In 2021, a Mexican businessman was arrested on suspicion of spying on a journalist with the Pegasus spyware, but the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group distanced itself from him. In Mexico, the businessman has long been described as an employee of a company that acted as an intermediary in spyware purchases.
According to López Obrador's top security official, two previous administrations spent $61 million on Pegasus spyware. The NSO Group has been linked to government surveillance of political opponents and journalists all over the world.
"NSO's technologies are only sold to vetted and approved government entities," as per the company.
Mexico had the largest list — approximately 15,000 phone numbers — of more than 50,000 reportedly selected for potential surveillance by NSO clients.
López Obrador has relied on the military more and given it more responsibilities than any of his predecessors, from building infrastructure to overseeing seaports and airports. This has sparked concern that the Mexican army, which has traditionally avoided politics, is becoming a force unto itself, with little oversight or transparency.
