A-list message, [A-List] US Security State: Throughout the Americas

Latinamerica Press - 16 June 2003

John Ross in Mexico City

Violation of national security

US government accesses personal records of more than 300 million Latin Americans.

A new initiative of the US Department of Defense's hush-hush Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aims to consolidate all public and private data bases to compile a complete electronic dossier on every living American.

The project, run by the chief of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, Admiral John Poindexter (convicted of five felonies for lying to Congress during the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal) aims "to capture information signatures of potential terrorists involved in low-intensity, low-density forms of warfare and crime." The Total Information Awareness project was signed into law Feb. 20 and assigned a development budget of US$200 million.

Apparently, under Washington's post-Iraq mandate, all Americans now include Latin Americans too. Since the terror attacks on New York and Washington 21 months ago, the US government, in its zeal to globalize snooping on its own people, has bought access to the personal records of more than 300 million Latin Americans, including the citizens of the region's two most populous nations, Mexico and Brazil, as well as Argentina, Colombia, and Costa Rica.

Under an agreement signed in September 2001 with the US Justice Department, ChoicePoint, an Atlanta information powerhouse, provides the agency overseen by US Attorney General John Ashcroft with access to updated Mexican voter registration lists containing the names, addresses, birthplaces and birth dates of 65 million citizens. Also provided are Mexico City drivers' license records dating back to 1997 and updated each month, and all automobile registration data collected in the capital during that same period.

While such public records are fair game in the United States, in Mexico they are closely guarded and their sale to ChoicePoint, and ultimately the US government, has raised issues of national security and sovereignty. An investigation into the circumstances of the illegal sale of this sensitive information to Ashcroft's department has been ordered by his Mexican counterpart, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. The scandal is enhanced by ChoicePoint's refusal to divulge from whom or how it obtained the data bases, citing confidentiality clauses in the purchase contracts.

Voter registration and drivers' license data bases are a prime law enforcement tool to track suspects and fugitives, and ChoicePoint's leasing of access to this information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (now an asset of the Department of Homeland Security) Quick Response Team worries many Mexicans about the prospect of the "Migra" (US Border Patrol) knocking on doors in Mexico City looking for a Los Angeles bail skip or a request from the FBI inviting the occupant to report suspicious neighbors to President George W. Bush's Terrorist Information Program (TIPS).

The theft of Mexican voter registration records is a serious embarrassment to President Vicente Fox's assertion that his country's electoral system is at last free of the fraud that kept the Institutional Revolutionary Party

(PRI) in

power for seven decades (1929-2000). The voting credential issued by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), whose legitimacy is now undermined, contains a digitized photo and thumb print and is essential ID in Mexico for everything from cashing a check to entering a public building. While only the names and addresses of voters are thought to be included in the data being disseminated by ChoicePoint, the drivers' license records contain home telephone numbers for 6 million Mexicans. The vehicle registration lists, which indicate motor serial numbers, will be helpful to ChoicePoint's auto insurance clients, its most profitable business. The data is thought to have been stolen from the now-defunct National Automobile Registry (RENAVE) whose director, Ricardo Cavallo, proved to be an Argentinean war criminal. He is now incarcerated in Mexico, awaiting extradition to Spain where Judge Baltazar Garz�n is pledged to try him for genocide committed during Argentina's dirty war.

ChoicePoint's ease in obtaining sensitive Mexican public records has occasioned a flurry of finger-pointing. Four thousand underpaid IFE officials in 32 states had access to the voter registration lists, which were contained on a series of easily-copied CDs. In addition, the political parties, whose veniality is legendary, all had access to the discs.

The Mexico City drivers' license data dates back to 1997 when the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution took control of the capital. The updating of the data on a monthly and yearly basis suggests an on-going conspiracy.

The widening scandal is doing serious damage to Fox's hopes for a credible mid-term election this July 6. The electoral process itself has been badly bruised by a pair of campaign funding scandals involving hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit contributions to the two major parties. Fox's failure to deliver promised reforms has further soured voters on the electoral process and a low turn-out is projected for July. The sale of the voter registration lists to Washington will only reinforce cynicism.

Meanwhile, National Autonomous University law professor Jorge Camil suggests a class action lawsuit by 65 million affected Mexicans to halt distribution of the lists. "But the US courts do not listen to Mexico," he said.

"The unlawful sale of this information to the Bush administration will be used to track millions of Mexicans and other Latin Americans who have committed no crime and cedes control of our lives to Washington," said Julio Tello of Monterrey's Technological Institute, who helped design the protocols for the use of such data bases in Mexico. "This is a violation of personal and political rights. Now it's not just the telemarketers with their stupid calls. The FBI has your number too."