Mexico: Civil society organizations reject government’s surveillance of human rights defenders

On 11 July 2016, an investigation by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and the New York Times revealed evidence that Dr. Simon Barquera, researcher at Mexico’s Public Health National Institute, Alejandro Calvillo, Director at El Poder del Consumidor and Luis Manuel Encarnación, Coordinator of ContraPESO Coalition received targeted attacks with the objective of infecting their mobile devices with surveillance malware exclusively sold to governments by the company NSO Group.

According to the evidence, the attacks are related to the target’s activities in defense of public health, particularly advocating for a soda-tax and criticizing deficient food labeling regulation.

In the light of these revelations, the signatory national and international civil society organizations:

1. Condemn the illegal surveillance revealed and show our solidarity and stand with the academic institutions and civil society organizations targeted with these attacks.
2. Express our concern about the Mexican government’s use of highly intrusive software such as the Pegasus malware commercialized by the NSO Group, particularly against researchers and civil society organizations. This type of surveillance malware that exploits unknown security vulnerabilities (zero-day) in commercial software and  products to obtain an absolute control of a device, severely compromises the right to privacy, especially when there is no legal controls or democratic oversight of state surveillance.
3. Demand the government of Mexico to stop the threats and surveillance against  researchers and civil society organizations and call for an immediate investigation to identify and punish the  officials responsible for illegal surveillance in Mexico.
4. Call international organizations, governments around the world and the international community  as  a  whole,  to  investigate  the  activities  of  the  NSO  Group  and     other companies that sell surveillance capabilities to Mexico, a country with a record of human rights abuses.
5. Express our special concern regarding this new instance of harassment against  researchers and health activists that affect the interests of the food and beverage industries. We call the industry to clarify its involvement or knowledge of the revealed surveillance and to publicly reject any act of intimidation against human rights defenders.

Signatories

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Asociación Nacional de la Prensa de Bolivia (ANP) Asociación para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones (APC) Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC)

Association of Caribbean Media Workers ARTICLE 19

Australian Privacy Foundation Bestbits

Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social AC (Cencos)

Centro de Estudios Constitucionales y en Derechos Humanos de Rosario Centro Horizontal

Centro de Reportes Informativos Sobre Guatemala (CERIGUA)

Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, A.C. (CMPDH)

Contingente MX DATA

Datos Protegidos Derechos Digitales

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Enjambre Digital

Espacio Público, Venezuela Fundación Karisma

Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) Fundamedios, Ecuador

Fundar, Centro de Análisis e Investigación Hiperderecho, Perú

Intercambio Internacional por la Libertad de Expresión (IFEX-ALC) Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir (ILSB)

Instituto de Prensa y Libertad de Expresión (IPLEX) Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS)

Katarzyna Szymielewicz

Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) Panoptykon Foundation

Patient Privacy Rights Privacy International Public Knowledge