In Mexico, the Ministry of Defense must give the public copies of the contracts it signed with Comercializadora Antsua, the supplier of Israeli company NSO Group’s Pegasus spy software. This has now been decided by the national data protection authority INAI. Mexico is one of the key countries in the Pegasus scandal.
At its meeting last week, the independent data protection authority pointed out that it is not just a matter of making the use of public funds transparent, but also of interventions in private communication, which may not take place without court approval.
“We therefore consider it essential to hand over the contracts as requested by a person, since not only would the use of the public funds be made transparent, but also the activities related to the monitoring of communications would be disclosed, which would allow society to protection of their rights to privacy, freedom of expression and inviolability of communication,” INAI Commissioner Josefina Román Vergara is quoted as saying in the Mexican press. Disclosure of the information had previously been denied for reasons of national security.
Transparency versus national security
The INAI bases its resolution on the General Transparency Law, which states that information on the procedures of direct award, restricted tender and the awarding of contracts of any kind must be published at least in a public version.
In response to requests for information, the Ministry of Defense stated that it had not found any data on these contracts in the offices of its General Staff, the General Administration and the General Directorates of Transmissions and Management. However, the INAI pointed out that the search was not exhaustive, that there are indications of the signing of these contracts and ordered a more thorough investigation.
The Department of Defense can appeal the INAI’s decision in court, even to the Supreme Court, which in the past has typically ruled in favor of protecting the confidentiality of Army information for reasons of national security.
Pegasus spies in Mexico and around the world
The Pegasus deployment in Mexico dates back to 2017 during the tenure of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Government agencies used the malware to spy on journalists and human rights activists, some activist groups and journalists revealed. Despite claims to the contrary, activists and journalists are said to have been spied on with Pegasus during the current term of office of left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In addition to Mexico, numerous other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates have used Israeli spyware for political surveillance. A large-scale surveillance campaign in Thailand was recently uncovered using Pegasus. According to Apple, it has now sent warnings to potentially affected users in 150 countries around the world.
In May, the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry into the use of Pegasus and comparable espionage software began its substantive work with a hearing of IT security experts. Recently, the US Supreme Court allowed a WhatsApp lawsuit over Pegasus spy software. The Israeli company NSO Group Technologies is said to have used WhatsApp servers to install spyware on 1,400 devices.
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