Editor’s note: On Mexico’s rapid, breath-taking descent into total surveillance

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…