Pegasus Spy Program Contracts to Be Made Public

The contracts used to acquire the Pegasus spyware will be made public by the Ministry of Finance following an order of the Supreme Court. The Court stated that this disclosure does not put national security at risk. With nine votes, the ministers resolved two appeals filed by the Legal Counsel of the Presidency against the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI), which sought to make the contracts public. The Court decided that information concerning software contracts from the years 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 must be disclosed.

Alberto Pérez Dayán, Minister, Supreme Court, argued that this information should be made public because it does not come from investigations and is not related to intelligence or counterintelligence operations aimed at preserving national security. "The hypotheses of confidentiality (...) cannot be based on the mere fact that the obligated party has faculties related to that matter. In a democratic society, information cannot be excluded without reasoned consideration in each specific case and not only because of the nature of the authority that contains it," argued Pérez Dayán.

Ministers Loretta Ortiz Ahlf and Lenia Batres Guadarrama opposed the ruling, asserting that it is reasonable for the Ministry of Finance to withhold the information due to national security concerns. "The reason for my dissent is that we are dealing with information that is actively being processed by the authorities. The data processed by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) is not properly an investigation but a preliminary analysis," said Ortiz.

Pegasus Program

Pegasus, an Israeli software, discreetly installs itself on a phone through an invitation, extracting information and enabling real-time monitoring of individuals' activities. The acquisition contract for Pegasus was initiated in 2011 during the presidency of Felipe Calderón and was subsequently employed during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and López Obrador. The country has invested over US$60 million in the program, solidifying its status as the most extensive user of Pegasus. According to Citizen Lab, since 2019, the software has exclusively targeted journalists, human rights defenders, and politician Raymundo Ramos.