Privacy in Mexico is dying

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Hello, I post this to share my concerns on how the world is going nuts, I tried to reach R3D (Mexican NGO about civil digital rights, it’s like a Mexican mini EFF, both of them even have had previous interactions) and they didn’t respond.

The thing is, since last year Mexico is rolling out “llaveMX” (with voluntarily registration), it’s a national centralized platform where you register your CURP (national unique identifier), your name and your phone, they supposedly did it to reduce/eliminate excessive bureaucracy.

That platform was made to do and track every paperwork or procedure related to the government or social services (e.g. to get your birth certificate, make appointments to public hospitals, gov scholarships, getting your passport, federal paperwork, ASEA (ambiental institution) participation, etc.).

But this week happened something that struck me, TecNM (through my school) sent an email on Sunday 22 at night - Early Monday, that we “have” to do a small course about drugs prevention, but in the few years I’ve been studying here they’ve never given that much care to drugs prevention and there is something catchy, to be able to do the course you need to register on llaveMX and it’s the only way to do it. They even hurry us to complete it ASAP because there is (or was) even money involved: ~$5,800 usd which is a LOT for the first university’s career division to complete it (I don’t know if it was nationwide, only for my uni, for each 126 centralized schools and 122 no-centralized schools or if they are going to give it accordingly to the amount of people who did the course), so they REALLY want us to do it and they are pressing the school divisions by the teachers through the money becase the government has previously cut off a lot of funding for the university.

My main concern is that they are also rolling out the biometric CURP (your identifier + most of your biometrics) and starting July, you won’t be able to use any mobile carrier unless you tie it with your CURP and ID.

The government killed every public institution related to public transparency, and now there are zero safeguards for data protection and data privacy given that authority at every level - military, federal, state, municipal, etc. (it’s worth mentioning that basically the military absorbed the police) can access your every tracked records in llaveMX without any kind of notification or permission, they also want every company within the country that has a database like e-commerce to share every purchase, every login, everything with the centralized database.[1]

And I included the ambiental institution because Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries to do ambiental activism.[2]

The cherry on top is that the government (like the taxes agency, ID registry agency and the military) and the major mobile carrier have had previous data breaches including the most recent one with Claude’s help, so we are all screwed. Privacy is dying.

[1]https://r3d.mx/2025/08/06/el-gobierno-mexicano-refuerza-sus-capacidades-de-vigilancia-con-el-nuevo-paquete-de-leyes/

[2]https://www.milenio.com/internacional/mexico-tercer-violento-ambientalistas-global-witness

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We have a similar system (which I’m not going to mention it’s name) here in thanksgiving bird country which got leaked couple of times in the past. Currently anyone can reach to your health records, medicines, phone numbers, adresses, legal history, relatives, id number etc. through illegal forums for around 15 in local currency (0.34 dollars). The worst part is the databases gets updated constantly because of lack of security and corrupt people. Stuff like scams, sim swaps, impersonations, doxxing has increased a lot to the point that these stuff are considered normal atm.

When you try to lecture people about privacy the general reaction you get is ‘‘everyone already got our info, why do you or I should care’’

By the way, it is actually borderline illegal to say there was a leak publicly and the government considers it ‘‘spreading misinformation’’, so I can technically get arrested for posting this online haha. They arrested a journalist in the past for this reason.

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@Konti I’m not sure what you were trying to do when you reached out to R3D, but if you’re thinking about trying to do advocacy yourself and looking for local groups, feel free to message me.

What I’ve found so far is that many organizations are focused on fighting at the national level for their respective governments. That can make it hard for organizing locally and regionally. I’m running into the same in the US, but we’re slowly making strides in finding other potential advocates and seeing how we can take action.

If you need to hear encouragement, I hope this can be it. Don’t give up on the fight for human dignity. Find a foothold to stand up for the right to privacy and start there. Maybe it will be just you for a while, but maybe over time you can find others who share your concerns and you can make a change.

I guess I’m writing this to myself. I just don’t want to see people giving up on the fight for digital freedom and independence right at the time when we need to be fighting the hardest. It sucks to be in this position, and yet it’s not going to get better on its own. The best I can do is offer my support.

But yeah it sucks. :frowning:

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I tried to reach out to them because I’m really confused on what it’s happening and maybe they had some news because they tried to stop those bills, but I’m gonna be sincere, I’m afraid to do advocacy, that country that builds spyware globally won’t stop until world domination and Mexico is a narco state.

If someone dies at criminals’ hands, sadly they’ll only become one more of the statistics, and I’m kinda pessimistic because I tried to advocate in my school and my friends, but they won’t even change to signal because “why if I already use WhatsApp?”.

I don’t have connections to protect myself, I’m afraid that the gov would put their eye on me even on the chances of getting a job in the future like north korea’s songbun that is currently affecting the grandchildren of the people who cared about their country at their time (I’m currently studying), someone even responded to me when I shared what’s happening: will that affect X footbal club?”.

Maybe as you said, I just needed to write this too, because right now I’m truly scared for what the future holds and nobody (close to me) really cares about, someone that read 1984 even agree that the situation is messed up but that’s just it, everything else I say is like “ohhh… ok” and then nothing happens. Worth to mention that at public universities, the school principal is also a politician craving for a higher rank, so if the alumni start to become a problem for the gov. our studies could be compromised.

Right now I just have no idea what to do… Because I’m scared of my own government, of my own future, but if I don’t fight for what’s best for our civil liberties, maybe I’ll be betraying my own values.

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I feel you. That sounds like a really difficult situation, and it doesn’t help to feel alone through it. At least in this case we have the forum to be able to stay connected.

It may help to find people closer to you who share similar interests. Maybe like an IT, cybersecurity, or programming club? Obviously the focus probably won’t be on digital rights, but you’re more likely to find people who also care about these issues in spaces like these. And if you’re still in school it may be easier to find these groups now than later!

After graduating school it may be harder, but there still may groups that share similar interests.

Sometimes the first step is realizing you’re not alone.

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Here in Costa Rica the situation is kinda similar, where the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones (Superior Tribune of Elections, if I’m not wrong) doxxes you making their database public so with just the name of someone you can see their PII. Simply disgusting.

This is not quite related to the main topic, I know, but this is to demonstrate how little govs care about privacy here in Latin America.

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Honestly, before clicking the link, I was expecting a news article about an accidental leak, not a state sponsored people search engine.. This is crazy.

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Oh wow, I had no idea something like that existed in Costa Rica! I had heard about there being interest in building out more police surveillance, but I didn’t have a baseline by which to grade the state of things so far. That is not good.

Are there groups in Costa Rica that fight this, whether focused on privacy or more general tech policy?

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It’s even more concerning knowing that you can also find minors datasheets and who are their parents, their IDs, full names and more. It’s pretty creepy, and this has been going on for years and years. And it’s ironic knowing that this country is ranked as the top 4 less cibersecure country not just of Latin America, but of the entire world.[1] We seriously need to do something…

Almost nope… This is the main reason why I would like to start doing something to wake up people and be prepared from what’s coming, because nowadays privacy should no longer be individualist. Just look at what’s going on nowadays, we can no longer just think on our own privacy, because the privacy rights of others are ours too. What would happen if this country rolls something like AgeVer and I’m the single one opposed to that? Got screwed.

Kinda. (This is why I previously said “almost nope”.) AFAIK there are some niche and small Fediverse conventions. I never went to one and right now I don’t have the resources to go to one or know someone that can explain me what they do, but my concern which these conventions is that they could be targeted only for tech-savvy people, reducing their exposure even more.

But well, I wanna thank the OP for posting this. I’ve been struggling keeping up with my projects related to privacy. This will help me to get motivated, stand up and try again. <3

More info regarding that.

So I wrote…

I would like to start doing something that could be scalable to the masses to wake up people from what’s coming.
…and I sighed writing that part, because I wrote quite some time ago in this post and this post on the Techlore’s forum talking about making a blog in Spanish about privacy, since I don’t have enough resources to go on YT or make TikToks or reels with a decent quality, but I ran into some issues personally, including personal and mental struggles, and how those conditions slowed me down.

I know that I’m not the president of my country to feel this way, but looking at the stuff that’s going on in the world, like AgeVer and other anti-democratic things, I have a FOMO feeling that I gotta seriously speak the fuck up before is too late; and if it gets too late, feel proud of myself that at least I tried instead of feeling guiltiness after not doing anything.

I also got inspired from the Activism section in PG, so that information can help me to take more informed decisions because I have to involve into privacy activism and fight for the digital rights of this country before is too late, because if no one does something I will.

  1. https://www.diarioextra.com/noticia/paraiso-para-hackers-costa-rica-entre-los-menos-ciberseguros/ ↩︎

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I get how you feel 100%. I started a group focused on half tech half activism in Miami that has grown to a little over a dozen people. It’s also expanded to a group cover all of Florida of about the same size. Lots of people are feeling like you’re feeling and taking action. I had the same thought you’re having.

Selfishly, I would love to see more content on digital rights issues in Spanish, even moreso for Latin American countries where it seems like that is under resourced (there’s probably not much out there for most countries to be honest). Being in Miami I would love to be able to point people to a Spanish language resource that can be trusted.

Legit, if anyone in this thread is wondering how to get started, feel free to ask me or even in the forum I guess. Maybe we can do a lot, or maybe we can only do a little, but we can do a lot more if we help each other out.

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