Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants, report says
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Summary
An extensive surveillance campaign undertaken by the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico has been revealed in a report by the US Justice Department.
The campaign, which targeted an FBI legal attaché investigating drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, utilized hacked phone data and CCTV cameras to track and intimidate potential aides and witnesses.
Although the campaign took place in 2018, the report highlights bigger concerns about “ubiquitous technical surveillance”, defined as “widespread collection of data and application of analytic methodologies… for the purpose of connecting people to things, events, or locations”.
Advances in hacking technology have made such surveillance activities more accessible to less sophisticated groups, making the threat “existential”, according to sources within the FBI and CIA.
