"Spying on Mexican journalists: investigating the lucrative market of cyber-surveillance", December 2020

KEY FINDINGS

A forensic analysis done by Amnesty International’s Security Lab shows that the editor-in-chief of the Mexican magazine Proceso, Jorge Carrasco, was targeted in 2016 with the spyware Pegasus, sold by the Israeli company NSO, while he was working on the Panama Papers. He is the tenth journalist known to have been targeted with this technology in Mexico.

In Veracruz, the Mexican state with the highest count of murdered journalists, a state-of-the-art espionnage unit was created in the late 1990s. Intelligence analysts kept files on journalists, activists and political opponents detailing their professional relationships, political affiliations, and sexual orientation, using a vast network of paid informants and surveillance technology.

Former employees of the Italian company Hacking Team give an exclusive account of how the cyber-surveillance technology they worked on was repeatedly misused in Mexico, including against journalists.

According to U.S. authorities, drug cartels themselves have had access to cyber surveillance tools through corrupt officials.

Today, Mexico remains a major importer of cyber-surveillance equipment from foreign companies, especially from Israel.

... In written answers to Forbidden Stories, NSO Group claimed to “fully investigate any credible claim of misuse, which includes assertions that [their] technology was used for any purpose other than legally preventing and investigating legitimate cases of terror and other serious crimes.”