U.S. funding Mexico's wiretaps

Mexico is expanding its ability to tap telephone calls and e-mail using money from the U.S. government, a move that underlines how the country's conservative government is increasingly willing to cooperate with U.S. on law enforcement.

The expansion comes as President Felipe Calderon is pushing to amend Mexico's constitution to allow officials to tap phones without a judge's approval in some cases.

Mexican authorities have been able to wiretap most telephone conversations and tap into e-mail for years, but the new $3 million Communications Intercept System being installed by Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency would expand its reach.
The system will allow authorities to track cellphone users as they travel, according to the contract specifications. It would include extensive storage capacity and allow authorities to identify callers by voice. The system, scheduled to begin operation within the next month, was paid for by the U.S. State Department and sold by Verint Systems, a politically connected company based in Melville, N.Y., that specializes in electronic surveillance.

Mexico will undoubtedly share the results of this surveilance with the United States, including communications between people in Mexico and in this country.

This story gives us an idea as to the surveilance being conducted in this country as well. The US Government is likely using the same companies and the same technologies, if anything on an even larger scale.

The specific company mentioned, Verint Systems, describes its work for national security agencies on its website:

Verint helps national security agencies generate actionable intelligence via a unified platform for the mass interception, filtering, and analysis of voice and data.

Sophisticated Probe and Filter Technology for Mass Interception

Verint’s sophisticated probing technology is designed to collect maximum communications pertaining to specific areas of interest.

Verint’s real-time filtering mechanisms extract essential information from the large volumes of intercepted data.

This image from their brochure gives an idea as to their range of surveillance capabilities:


So why don't I feel safer?

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