U.S.
government purchase data on
Mexicos 65 million registered Voters
02 May, 2003
A probe has been launched
into how the Atlanta-based corporation ChoicePoint Inc. was able to
purchase data on Mexicos 65 million registered voters as well
as six million licensed drivers in Mexico City.
According to an investigation
carried out by the Mexico City newspaper Milenio, ChoicePoint was commissioned
by the U.S. government to obtain the data.
Mexican legislators want
President Vicente Fox to ask his U.S. counterpart for what reason the
U.S. government needs this confidential information.
ChoicePoint is the only data-gathering
company that specializes in acquiring information on foreign nationals
in general and Latinos in particular.
According to Milenio, low-ranking
Mexican government employees routinely sell electronic information to
data-gathering groups in a clandestine manner and pocket the proceeds.
ChoicePoint also offers information on 90 percent of large corporations
operating in Mexico, disclosing data on names of leading executives,
phone numbers, electronic systems and levels of capitalization.
This surveillance of Latin
Americans began September 25, 2001, exactly two weeks after the terrorist
attacks. On that date the U.S. Department of Justice awarded ChoicePoint
a 67-million dollar contract for providing information on Mexico and
other Latin countries. Though the contract expires July 31, 2005, the
government enriched Choice-Point to the tune of another 11 million dollars
on April 8, 2002.
James Lee, a spokesman for
the company, defended ChoicePoint's activities on grounds that its data-gathering
was a valuable tool in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.
Lee declared that information obtained by his company "can be used
in any type of criminal investigation, whether it involves terrorism
or some other type of crime. It is useful in identifying suspicious
individuals and in some cases it can even pinpoint their whereabouts."
These protestations fell
on deaf ears in Mexico. Raul Carranca, a well-known jurist, said that
ChoicePoint's purchase of names in the Federal Electoral Register and
of drivers' licenses constituted an invasion of Mexico's sovereignty.
He added that under the Federal Penal Code an offender could receive
up to 12 years in prison for damaging, destroying or illegally extracting
data from a government informational system for reasons of personal
gain.
Particularly biting were
the comments of columnist Marcela Gomez Zalce. In Acentos, her widely-read
column, Gomez Zalce expressed the opinion that data obtained by ChoicePoint
would end up in the hands of the CIA, FBI and DEA. As for the protestations
of such parliamentary groups as National Action Party and the formerly
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that they would move
toward protecting the privacy of Mexicans, she said that this was a
classic case of covering the well after the baby has drowned -- Spanish
version of "locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen."
In addition to Mexico, ChoicePoint's
shadow has fallen over Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. However, the company has discontinued
its role in Argentina, due to lack of demand and a strict new law relating
to privacy.