Editor’s note: On Mexico’s rapid, breath-taking descent into total surveillance
A National Guard soldier at an event marking the sixth anniversary of the organization’s founding. Image credit: Presidency of Mexico (please note: this image has been cropped from its original version to exclude an eagle which the soldier is holding).
by Andrew Law, founder and editor.
In 2014, Luisa Alcalde — now Morena’s party president — blasted then-President Peña Nieto’s telecom reform on Twitter: “Signal blocking, prior censorship, data retention, geolocation all in the hands of #Segob.” A decade later, her critique fits just as well with the sweeping intelligence and security laws passed last week by her own party under President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The new laws mandate a centralized national platform compiling every citizen’s and company’s personal data: telecom records, banking info, healthcare, education, vehicle registrations, court records. All of it. With no independent court oversight, no meaningful access restrictions, and the possibility of real-time geolocation.
At the same time, Congress pushed through reforms to the National Guard that, as we report this week, all but erase the line between military and civilian authority.
Ana Lilia Moreno of México Evalúa tells me the changes mark one of the most disruptive shifts in Mexican public life since the Revolution, and she’s fearful of their implications. “For the last 30 years, we have become used to living in an open society. This shrinks the space for civil activity,” she says. And she’s right. In a country where journalists and dissidents are routinely harassed, surveilled, and sometimes killed, a digital dragnet with no guardrails is dangerous and reckless on a scale which is breath-taking.
The Sheinbaum administration’s answer to these concerns is effectively “trust us.” It’s a position reminiscent of how AMLO used to wave off corruption concerns. But recent facts say otherwise, with numerous Morena officials having their US visas revoked under clouds of suspicion, and three Mexican financial institutions being sanctioned by the Trump administration. In 2024 alone, Mexico saw 31 million cyberattacks, many targeting core state institutions like SEDENA. The government cannot protect its own systems, and it will be even less able to protect the sprawling data trove it accumulates on 130 million citizens.
The impact of all this stretches beyond Mexico’s citizenry, through. Moreno highlights to me how foreign companies operating in Mexico now face serious compliance risks. For example, Europeans resident in Mexico will need a government-issued biometric CURP card for basic services — housing, travel, banking. But companies handling that data must comply with GDPR, which these laws directly conflict with. Penalties for noncompliance could run up to 4% of global revenue. Mexican law, for its part, also provides stiff penalties. It’s a legal and operational morass.
For firms weighing investment in Mexico, this is yet one more risk to account for, on top of insecurity, impunity, and a restructured judiciary now under de facto executive control. There should be many firms holding board level meetings today to assess the complicated and daunting compliance and safeguarding requirements they will now need to build.
Think of this as the Pegasus-ification of Mexico. AMLO made dubious claims that he rid the government of the infamous spyware. But who needs Pegasus when you’re building a live, centralized tracking system for the entire population?
Mexico has long had a homegrown surveillance tradition, stretching from Cold War-era blacklists to CIA-backed spying that targeted activists, artists and politicians alike. Sheinbaum, herself once an activist, should frankly know better. She has categorically denied anyone will be “spied” on, despite the clear reading of her own law, and her government and party have cloaked these reforms in the language of democracy and civic security. History, precedent, and recent events all point in a different, darker direction.
This is a civil liberties crisis. But it’s also a full-spectrum governance breakdown unfolding in real time. It’s the seedbed of a potential police state with sweeping implications for citizens, foreigners, and businesses, while offering precisely zero added capability to curb Mexico’s security crisis. And it’s all happening on the 25th anniversary of Mexico’s democratic transition. Our coverage this week explores how that’s happening, the opposition’s complicity in getting us here, and how this moment coincides with rising market unease over Mexico’s investment-grade status.