15The Attorney General's Office (FGR), led by Alejandro Gertz Manero, used software to track the location of people through their cell phones on 135,000 occasions between 2019 and 2021, according to an investigation by Animal Político. However, it only presented 328 petitions before federal judges to carry out these geolocations and obtained the corresponding authorization in 0.24% of the cases.
To acquire this software, the Prosecutor's Office spent around 142 million 898 thousand pesos between 2018 and 2019, according to contracts number PGR/SEIDO/DGCTC/GSPN/001/2018, PGR/SEIDO/DGCTC/GSPN/003/2018 (page 16) and FGR/SEIDO/DGCTC/GSPN/001/2019. The company Neonlix de México S. A. de C. V. was contracted to provide the Geomatrix software, which is capable of monitoring the location of cell phones through the telephone networks to which the device is connected.
Despite numerous requests for information, the FGR did not provide data on the number of victims rescued or persons detained as a result of this surveillance, despite the fact that these are the only legal reasons for tracking the location of citizens. The Attorney General's Office admitted having used the Geomatrix software on 135 thousand occasions, assuring that all the queries made by the agents of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office had judicial authorization.
However, the National Transparency Platform (PNT) shows that between 2019 and 2021, 328 surveillance requests were submitted to federal judges, without specifying how many of these were to use the Geomatrix software or to request information from telephone concessionaires. This means that in only 0.24% of the cases was the required judicial authorization obtained.
The investigation also reveals that the Attorney General's Office acknowledged having surveilled 3,157 people between 2018 and 2021, which includes geolocations, interventions to private communications, obtaining retained data and data extraction. This figure exceeds the 328 judicial authorizations obtained by the FGR.
In the requests to federal judges to intercept the geolocation of cell phones, the Prosecutor's Office justified its actions by arguing the need to prove theories of the case, investigate crimes related to operations of resources of illicit origin, counterfeiting or alteration of currency, and to gather evidence or exhaust lines of investigation.
The surveillance requests came from various agencies, including delegations from Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Hidalgo and agents of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.
Article 303 of the National Code of Criminal Procedures establishes that the prosecutor's offices can intervene geolocations with judicial authorization or, in emergency cases where the lives of people are at risk, without permission, as long as it is accredited before a federal judge in less than 48 hours. However, the Attorney General's Office admitted in response to requests for access to information that it does not have data on the number of victims rescued or persons detained as a result of these interventions.
Luis Fernando García Muñoz, director of the Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D), criticized the legislation regulating location surveillance, pointing out that it allows interpretations that could be used to avoid the need for judicial authorization.
García Muñoz stated that Article 303 of the National Code of Criminal Procedures is poorly drafted, allowing real-time geographic location to be carried out autonomously by the Prosecutor's Office without the need for the collaboration of a telecommunications concessionaire.
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