Colombian Police Built an Unlawful Surveillance State, Privacy International Report Says

Despite international scrutiny after surveillance scandals in recent years, Colombia’s intelligence and police agencies built their own secret and unlawful surveillance systems that have the capability to monitor mobile and Internet communications, Privacy International said in a report released Monday. The report said the Integrated Recording System was developed in 2005 and was capable of “monitoring 3G mobile phone networks as well as trunk lines, carrying voice and data communications for the whole country,” the report said. The surveillance system was created as a result of “institutional rivalries between the different security agencies,” it said. The Administrative Department of Security (DAS), which was dissolved in 2011 after revelations it spied on journalists, judges, opposition politicians and human rights activists, also had separate surveillance capabilities. “The exposure of DAS’ secret probe should expand the existing investigation to consider whether there is more to this scandal than the abuse of one surveillance system,” said Privacy International Advocacy Officer Matthew Rice. News of a previously unheard of mass surveillance system “points out serious problems of transparency of and control over expenditures on intelligence activities, besides the obvious lack of legitimacy of deployment of mass surveillance systems in Colombia," said Juan Diego Castañeda, a lawyer and researcher at the Karisma Foundation in Colombia.