Mexican lawmakers have launched a Federal Commission to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the country’s military, including the use of powerful spyware technology.
The Commission, made up of lawmakers from both Mexico’s Upper and Lower Houses of Congress, is to request a report from the army in the wake of recent media reports alleging it used Israeli software (known as Pegasus) to hack the phone of a prominent human rights activist, Raymundo Ramos.
The reports, based on a document hacked from military servers last year, allege that the Mexican Army was monitoring private conversations in August of that year between Mr Ramos (pictured) and reporters.
According to the reports, an analysis of Mr Ramos’s phone by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found that it had been targeted using Pegasus in the same period that those discussions happened.
The conversations took place on encrypted messaging platforms, meaning only a tool as sophisticated as Pegasus could have intercepted them.
“It’s a violation of my privacy, of my human rights,” Mr Ramos said.
“It obviously puts me at risk, it puts my family at risk, my collaborators, the victims.”
Mexico’s military has a long history of spying on activists and journalists, including in 2017 when the army was accused of using Pegasus to hack the phones of lawyers investigating the disappearance of 43 students in 2014.
Human rights advocates say such use of sophisticated technology by the military is illegal, given that the military can’t investigate civilians, and even if it could, such interference would require a sign-off from the judiciary.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected on a promise to take the military off the streets and end the espionage that occurred in previous Governments.
However, since taking office he has vastly expanded the military’s budget and powers, putting it in charge of everything from building airports to rolling out Mexico’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
Mexico City, 16 March 2023
