MEXICO CITY (AP) — Press freedom groups said Tuesday that the Mexican government was apparently still using the Pegasus spyware in 2022 to tap into the phones of human rights activists, despite a promise by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to put an end to that kind of espionage.
The activists who are victims of espionage work for the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez group. The center, which has been the target of espionage in the past, denounces abuses by the government and the military.
The spying was confirmed through a forensic investigation conducted by the University of Toronto Citizen Lab, the groups said Tuesday.
“At least three human rights defenders and two journalists have been illegally spied on with Pegasus, presumably by the Army, which, according to information released by the media, is the only (governmental) institution that currently has Pegasus,” according to a report by the press freedom advocacy group Article 19, the Network for the Defense of Digital Rights, and Mexican media outlets.
The New York Times newspaper was the first to report on the new spying.
Israeli-made Pegasus spyware is sold only to government agencies; clandestinely infiltrates phones and other devices to collect data and spy on their owners.
On the eve, the Mexican Supreme Court struck down a 2016 rule that allowed the military to infiltrate civilian phones without a warrant.
Upon taking office in December 2018, López Obrador vowed to end government espionage, of which he himself, he said, was a victim for decades when he was in opposition.
Asked about the alleged hacking on Tuesday, the president did not respond directly at his daily news conference, but reiterated his belief that what his government is doing is intelligence gathering, not espionage.
“We have a clear conscience to say that human rights are not going to be violated, nor is anyone going to be spied on,” López Obrador said. “We haven’t done it to anyone.”
The center’s director Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, Santiago Aguirre, and the center’s director of international affairs were the most recent targets of espionage.
According to the report, their phones were infiltrated between June and September 2022, when the two activists were involved in investigations and protests against past army abuses, including the 2014 kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students from a rural normal school.
Previous victims included journalist and author Ricardo Raphael in 2019 and 2020 and an anonymous journalist from the online news outlet Animal Político.
In October, the same groups said in a report that the Mexican military was allegedly continuing to spy on human rights activist Raymundo Ramos, among others. The government apparently leaked a recording of a telephone conversation in which Ramos’s voice is heard. The government said it had infiltrated the phone of a suspected drug trafficker and that Ramos had called or received a call from that number.
For years, Ramos has collected information about abuses by the military and police, including numerous murders, in the drug-dominated border city of Nuevo Laredo. His phone was apparently hacked with Pegasus in 2020.
According to leaked documents, the military has requested budgets for espionage programs from companies related to the distribution of Pegasus. The Guacamaya hacker group found army documents with budget requests for 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Victims of the spyware attacks said they assumed the military was responsible given the nature of its work and the timing of the spying.
The Mexican defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
López Obrador’s security chief said the two previous governments bought Pegasus spyware for $61 million.
López Obrador has leaned on the military and given it more responsibilities — from building infrastructure to supervising ports and airports — than any of his predecessors.
This has raised concerns that the military, which has traditionally kept out of politics, may be becoming an independent force with little oversight or transparency.
