Surveillance in Latin America: 2016 in Review

Throughout 2016, EFF and our civil society partners have been closely following digital rights developments throughout Latin America. You can see some of the results in Unblinking Eyes, our exhaustive survey of surveillance law and practice across the Americas, as well as multiple countries’ localized versions of Who Has Your Back (Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil), our guide to how companies respond to government data requests. Both projects were led by an increasingly strong network of local digital rights groups in Latin America, who, together with some investigative work by the region’s incredibly brave journalists, have been keeping up the fight against mass surveillance.

ARGENTINA: A Database of Mobiles, Backsliding Among Spies

Argentinians' privacy took a massive hit in October, when the Argentinean Ministry of Communication and the Ministry of Security adopted a resolution that creates a registry of users’ mobile communication services, citing a need to investigate serious and organized crime, including identity requirements for prepaid SIMs. Argentinian digital rights groups like Asociación por los Derechos Civiles fought the new regulation and opposed the nominees to lead the federal intelligence agency (AFI) for their lack of independence from the government. Despite that, the Senate confirmed their appointments in August, which may suggest the intelligence agencies are becoming more politicized and reverting back to old practices.

BRAZIL: WhatsApp Gets Blocked Again

In 2016, for the fourth time, WhatsApp users in Brazil faced an order blocking the popular, Facebook-owned secure chat service in July. Unlike in the past, the decision was made public, but the details of the case, including information available through the legal docket, are still not available. The government had been seeking real time communications between users and was frustrated by WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption. 

CHILE: Surveillance Is Ballooning Out of Control

Surveillance in Chile reached new heights in June 2016, when the country's highest court gave a green light to surveillance balloons. In its ruling, the Chilean Supreme Court rejected a legal action filed by Fundación de Datos Protegidos, Corporación Fundamental and Derechos Digitales to end surveillance through camera-balloons in two municipalities of the capital.

PARAGUAY: Military Caught Spying on Journalists

In August, a Paraguayan newspaper revealed that the Paraguayan government used its intelligence system to spy on journalists. The military intelligence team carried out an operation to spy on two cell phone numbers of the journalists from the ABC newspaper who were investigating a series of articles about corruption in the military.

PERU: New Toys for the Spooks

In August of 2016, the Associated Press revealed that the Peruvian government acquired a $22 million tool from Israeli company Verint to conduct mass surveillance of communications. The program, named Pisco, lets officials "intercept and monitor" satellite networks that carry voice and data traffic, putting the private communications of millions of Peruvians at risk. Located in a three-story building next to the country's spy agency, Pisco sits on a Lima military base off-limits to the public. It can track 5,000 individual targets and simultaneously record the communication