Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto: His attempts to differentiate
himself from his predecessor
Felipe Calderon may fall flat unless he
shows more spine on the
issue of NSA surveillance, stands up for
Mexico's sovereignty and
demands an end to U.S. surveillance.
Latest NSA Leak Puts President Nieto's
Credibility at Stake (La Jornada, Mexico)
"This provides added incentive for the present government to
adopt a more assertive and forceful attitude toward the neighboring country,
and to demand the immediate cessation of spying, an exhaustive explanation of
the ways and means with which it has been practiced, and proof that all information
obtained through these illicit channels has been destroyed."
According
to a secret document of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA
for its English acronym), leaked by former consultant Edward Snowden and published
yesterday by German news magazine Der Spiegel, in May 2010, the NSA
managed to hack into a central server within the Mexican presidential network
and gain access to the public e-mail account of former President Felipe Calderón. That account, which was also used by several
cabinet members, contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership
communications that permitted ongoing insight into Mexico's political system
and internal stability." Its hacking provided, "a lucrative
source" of information to the NSA.
The
revelation compliments last month’s disclosures by TV Globo - published in Mexico by this newspaper,
that in 2012, the U.S. spy agency boasted of maintaining a strict watch over
the communications of then-presidential candidate Enrique Peña
Nieto, and is concrete confirmation of Washington’s widespread and systematic
interference into the confidential information of many of the world’s
governments.
The
novelty then, strictly speaking, is not that the government of our neighboring
country infiltrates the internal communications of Mexican institutions, but
that it was done during the rule of one of the lamest and most submissive of
Mexico’s Federal Administrations. In fact, over the past six years, the presidency
has practically put the direction of public safety as well as the corresponding
information directly into the hands of Washington, as was shown by the State Department cables WikiLeaks
handed this newspaper, and which were published in these pages in 2011.
These
documents showed, for example, that in January 2007, Calderon's Public Security
Secretary GenaroGarcía
Luna, offered Michael Chertoff - who at the time was
responsible for U.S. Homeland Security, “free access to our intelligence on
public safety” (La Jornada,
05/25/11, p. 2). Other revelations include the U.S. Embassy’s participation in
the formulation and implementation of police and military strategies (see, for
example, La Jornada,
03/05/11, p.4).
Even
before that exasperating submission to the authorities of the neighboring country,
the NSA maintained illegal monitoring over the
electronic communications of Los
Pinos [the presidential residence]. This gives an
idea of the damage done to national sovereignty, not only by the docility of Calderón himself to the U.S. government, but by the regular
espionage that was maintained at all times against Mexico's presidential entourage.
Posted
By Worldmeets.US
The
above provides added incentive for the present government to adopt a more
assertive and forceful attitude toward the neighboring country, and to demand the
immediate cessation of spying, an exhaustive explanation of the ways and means
with which it has been practiced, and proof that all information obtained
through these illicit channels has been destroyed. Without such an attitude,
any attempt by the present administration to differentiate itself from the
previous one in terms of sovereignty and public security will lack credibility,
and the institutions and citizens of Mexico will remain subject to the
unpunished theft of their data by government agencies of the United States.
