Nobody's Sure Who's Supplying Mexico With $350 Million Worth of Border Spy-Tech

Well, nobody outside the Mexican Army and Department of Defense has little idea just who’s behind the surveillance gear contracts, at least. The DoD did recently confirm that the contracts are indeed authentic. One problem, though: Something’s up with Security Tracking Solutions, the predictably shady company stated in the contracts as providing all the gear.

The company doesn’t appear to have any online presence, though is listed as operating out of Jalisco state, near Guadalajara. But go and check out where STS says it is and you’ll find nothing but run-down residential sprawl, apparently, with no signs of any narco-sniffing tech firm in sight. That’s according to some ace sleuthing by El Universal, the Mexican daily that not only rolled out empty-handed from STS’ claimed address, but that leaked a stash of secret documents last month purportedly “showing deals made between 2011-12 by a top army general” and STS, as Slate reports.

All this, presumably, to sniff out drugs, drug mules, and drug lords moving all over the borderlands. And yet El Universal has quoted Mexican military sources who say the shiny new toys are being used by an intelligence squad’s top brass for "various tasks, including political espionage." For its part, the DoD rebuffed the accusations, saying the tools are for legit (see: legal) crime-fighting schemes, which positions Mexico "at the forefront of technological advances."

But even while its unclear whether this influx will be used solely to beat back the narcos, or if (and how) it’ll be leveraged for shady political eavesdropping, we at least know some of what’s being rolled out. And taken within the drug-bust mileau, at least, we can be fairly sure for what purposes the stuff serve, too.

The Mexican Army supposedly sits on a pile of surveillance software. Among other things, these programs are capable of mining out a mobile phone’s text message logs, intercepting calls and emails, tracking instant messages, even “covertly turning on a mobile phone’s microphone,” as Slate notes, so as to record and relay the dialogue between, say, two low-level and unknowing narcos. This spread of mobile gaze-tech offers a distinct advantage to the Mexican military in that it allows spooks to mine data and log conversations by planting Trojan-like spyware directly onto phones, freeing them from having to carry out wiretaps through equally corrupt middlemen like telecoms.

You know, just like every other school kid’s superhero power wish. One of the wackier gadgets STS reportedly bequeathed the Mexican DoD is a type of radar scanner that can see through walls. These aren’t entirely new – they’ve been eyed by law enforcement agencies for a few years, now, though not much is clear as to where and when the devices are called upon. To get an idea for the steady pickup in this market sector – and to try and gauge what Security Tracking Solutions may be up against – look at this comparable radar released in 2006 by a British firm. Better yet, recall MIT brainiacs announcing last year how they’d fashioned an “urban war fighter” radar unit to pick up movement through walls at up to 60 feet away. Oh wow.

OK, OK. So maybe not a direct line to STS shadiness, but do you really expect the U.S. to not be somehow involved in everything in Mexico that’s dually corrupt and narcos-ridden? Mexico has received ongoing aid from the Americans in installing “up to 107 monitoring stations for intercepting communications nationwide,” as the LA Times reports. With or without STS, it’s totally working.

Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson

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