We already knew the Mexican government previously purchased Pegasus , a sophisticated surveillance software sold by NSO Group , the Israeli cyberarms company. As the Times reports, that spyware has been used to intimidate activists, reporters and human rights defenders. According to Citizen Lab , the digital rights research group that analyzed the spyware infections, targets of the Pegasus program include:

In Mexico, we are living a human rights crisis. The government's response has been far from solving cases of corruption, forced disappearances, and torture, but to spy on those who report them, according to reporting published this week in The New York Times .

These cases directly challenge the legitimacy of the Mexican government. Despite being illegal, the abuse of hacking tools against activists and reporters in Mexico has become a systematic policy of intimidation and harassment.

But there is also evidence of three Mexican government agencies having purchased Pegasus: the Attorney General ( for $15 million ), the National Defense Ministry ( for around $250 million ), and the Center for Research and National Security, or CISEN (according to one of the leaked Hacking Team emails) . What's more, the NSO Group claims it only does business with governments.

Those who may have fallen victim to the actions described in your article are called to file their complaint before the Attorney General of the Republic in order to carry out the corresponding investigation.

For the government of the Republic, the respect of privacy and the protection of all individual personal data are inherent values of our freedom, democracy and Rule of Law. Therefore we condemn any attempt at violating the right to privacy of any individual.

I am writing regarding the article entitled "Using texts as bait, governmental software aims at Mexican activists and their families." As indicated in your actual text, there is no evidence that Mexican government agencies are responsible for the supposed espionage as described in the article.

The president's office initially denied the Times report from June 19, stating there "was no proof" to claims the Mexican government illegally targeted citizens using spyware . And while at it, the president's office told the victims to please go and file a complaint at the Attorney General's office—one of the Mexican agencies that purchased the malware from NSO Group.

The president also portrayed himself as a victim of espionage. "We live in a society that feels spied [on] all the time," Peña Nieto said, adding that he himself has received "text messages from unknown sources" so he tries to "be careful with what he talks [about] over the phone."

It didn't take long for Peña Nieto to admit to the Mexican government purchasing surveillance technologies. During a press conference on June 22, he said the spyware was used for national security purposes and for combating organized crime. While it is "very easy to signal and point a government as an entity that spies " on its citizens, Peña Nieto said, it is "utterly false" to claim Mexico does.

The popular saying "he who doesn't owe anything has nothing to fear" does not apply in this case. If the Mexican government has all your information, anything can be taken out of context, edited and used against you. In April of last year, as part of a smear campaign that stemmed from the investigation into the case of the missing 43 students, someone leaked a phone conversation of the assistant director of the Centro Pro de Derechos Humanos, making it seem he had received money illegally. In reality, these were two different conversations that had no relationship with each other. But after being edited together, the message was successfully twisted.

The way to infect a target with Pegasus is to send SMS text messages containing some kind of false information to a target's cellphone. The goal is to deceive the individual into clicking on a web page where they unwittingly download the malware. Pegasus then spreads like a virus through the device, turning their iPhone or Android into a digital spy at the government's beck and call. Operators then take over messages, emails, calls and activities on the targets' phones, knowing their locations and intimate details of their private lives. The malware also allows officials to remotely activate a phone's camera and microphones without the knowledge of the victim. Everything is recorded and registered.

Moreover, the Mexican government is the leading client of Hacking Team, an Italian cyberarms firm that sells similar malware called Galileo. This was used by the governor in the state of Puebla to spy on his political opponents .

Peña Nieto spied on his political opponents during the 2012 presidential campaigns. Pegasus was used before against Rafael Cabrera , another key journalist in the investigation of the president's house, and the malware was also used against activists who proposed a tax increase on soda companies.

Most certainly, the use of surveillance techniques against opponents and dissidents is a common practice for the Mexican president, even if it is illegal.

The constitution and law are clear: In order to justify the use of Pegasus in these cases, the Mexican government would have to prove that the targets are under criminal investigation or pose an "imminent threat to national security", and that a court order authorized the surveillance. If officials fail to do so, illegal surveillance is punishable with prison sentences ranging from 6 to 12 years.

In the case of NSO Group, part of the problem is it is not punishable because international human rights treaties don't directly apply to companies. On the other hand, while the Wassenaar Arrangement that controls the export of arms and "dual purpose technology" does exist, it does not have binding legal force among participating states, including Mexico. In other words, the Arrangement has to be implemented in national laws to have effect, which almost never happens, and especially not in Mexico.

Paranoia magnifies totalitarian regimes. Silence begins to settle in.

In a context of impunity, surveillance is added to a devastating panorama of censorship. Mexico is one of the most dangerous places for journalists, oscillating between war-torn countries like Afghanistan and failed states like Somalia. According to Article 19, an NGO that defends freedom of speech rights, 106 journalists have died and another 25 have disappeared in Mexico since 2000. In the last six years, reporters have denounced more than 800 cases of harassment, assault or homicide committed against them and their peers while the "independent" federal office in charge of investigating such cases has convicted suspects in only three. The government places full blame on cartels for attacks on the press, yet civil society organizations identified connections to public officials in 53 percent of the 426 attacks recorded in 2016.