"'It's a free-for-all': How hi-tech spyware ends up in the hands of Mexico's cartels" 7 December 2020

Corrupt Mexican officials have helped drug cartels in the country obtain state-of-the-art spyware which can be used to hack mobile phones, according to a senior DEA official.

As many as 25 private companies – including the Israeli company NSO Group and the Italian firm Hacking Team – have sold surveillance software to Mexican federal and state police forces, but there is little or no regulation of the sector – and no way to control where the spyware ends up, said the officials.

“It’s a free-for-all,” the official told the Cartel Project, an initiative coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a global network of investigative journalists whose mission is to continue the work of reporters who are threatened, censored or killed. “The police who have the technology would just sell it to the cartels.”

Over the past decade, Mexico has become a major importer of spyware, as officials insist they need to equip themselves against the powerful organised crime groups that have helped drive the country’s murder rate to record levels.

But the surveillance kit has also been used to target individuals not accused of any wrongdoing, including the widow of a murdered journalist, activists campaigning for a sugar tax on sodas and lawyers investigating human rights abuses....

...Many regional and state forces are accused of colluding with the crime organisations they are supposed to be confronting, so the spyware can easily pass into the hands of the mafia or corrupt politicians...

...[L]eaked emails from Hacking Team revealed that by 2012, Veracruz already had access to a trial version of the company’s Remote Control System (RCS), which infects computers through malicious files...

...For journalists, the situation is particularly dangerous. In 2012, journalist Regina Martínez was murdered while investigating allegations of corruption and organised crime during the administration of two state governors, Fidel Herrera and Javier Duarte. Sixteen journalists were murdered during Duarte’s six-year term, when reporters and photographers said surveillance intensified...

...The former director of Hacking Team, David Vincenzetti, declined to respond to questions from the Cartel Project. The company was sold in 2019...