Already Rife with Corruption, Latin America Is Now Aggressively Spying on Citizens Bryan Clark - The Next Web
go to original April 7, 2016

A new report by the Santiago-based NGO, Derechos Digitales (digital rights) claims that nearly every Latin American country, from Mexico to Chile (and practically everywhere in-between) is using aggressive surveillance software to spy on its citizens.

The report relied heavily on information from a 2015 breach of an Italian company, Hacking Team, that made public over a million internal emails detailing the use of malware and system vulnerabilities to create spyware capable of intercepting data on nearly any phone or PC.

Authorities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Panama all currently own the software and several more, such as Argentina, Guatemala, Uruguay and Venezuela have made inquiries but don’t appear to have purchased the tool. Of course, many of these purchases took place through intermediaries — like Israeli software company NICE Systems — due to export restrictions on Hacking Team’s software so the scope of ownership could far exceed the details of the report.

Latin America is already a region overrun with corruption, deep political division, and repressive authoritarian regimes. The new software could facilitate entirely new ways to further divide the populace and silence dissidents and activists.

“In Latin America, surveillance and government spying activities are worthy of suspicion, especially if we take into account the history of authoritarianism and repression in the region,” the report states. “Spying programs that are as invasive as Hacking Team lend themselves to human rights abuses and violations.”

From a legal standpoint, the rule of law is weak, but several countries do have laws that they’re actively ignoring by using the software.

Read the rest at The Next Web

Photo: Matt Murphy/Flickr

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