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Comparative Analysis of Surveillance Laws and Practices in Latin America Katitza Rodríguez Pereda October 2016 1 The lead author of the “Comparative Analysis of Surveillance Laws and Practices in Latin America” is Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) International Rights Director, Katitza Rodríguez Pereda. The legal review was done by EFF's Civil Liberties Director, David Greene. The technical review was done by EFF's Senior Staff Technologist, Seth Schoen. EFF's International Project Manager, Kim Carlson edited and formatted this report. EFF would like to thank Juan Camilo Rivera who consulted for EFF on this project, and Ana María Acosta, EFF Google Policy Fellow (2016), for their contributions to this report. EFF would like to thank the following individuals for their valuable input, assistance, and feedback in the preparation of this paper: Agustina Del Campo, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información (Argentina) Ana Tuduri (Uruguay) Carolina Botero, Fundación Karisma (Colombia) Daniela Schnidrig, Global Partners Digital (Argentina) Dennys Antonialli, InternetLab (Brazil) Fabrizio Scrollini (Uruguay) Jacqueline Abreu, Internet Lab (Brazil) Jorge Gabriel Jímenez (Guatemala) Juan Carlos Lara, Derechos Digitales (Chile, Latin America) Juan Diego Castañeda Gómez, Fundación Karisma (Colombia) Leandro Ucciferri, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (Argentina) Luciana Peri, Fundación Acceso (Central America) Luis Fernando García, R3D (Mexico) Maricarmen Sequera, TEDIC (Paraguay) Marlon Hernández Anzora (El Salvador) Miguel Morachimo, Hiperderecho (Peru) Verónica Ferrari, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información (Argentina) Thank you also to the following EFF staffers and consultants who contributed substantial time to the completion of this project: Carlos Wertheman, EFF Spanish Editor Danny O'Brien, International Director David Bogado, former EFF Latin American Coordinator (Paraguay) Justina Díaz Cornejo, translator Sara Fratti, translator Ramiro Ugarte, legal consultant 2 The following reports are part of a larger regional project conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 12 Latin American countries. They have been used as the main sources for the “Comparative Analysis of Surveillance Laws and Practices in Latin America.” Ana Tudurí, Fabrizio Scrollini, & Katitza Rodríguez, “State Surveillance of Communications and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Uruguay,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/uruguay Daniela Schnidrig and Verónica Ferrari, “State Communications Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Argentina,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/argentina Dennys Antonialli & Jacqueline de Souza Abreu, “State Surveillance of Communications in Brazil and the Protection of Fundamental Rights,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & InternetLab, (2015). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/brazil Fundación Acceso, “Privacy for digital rights defenders: a study on how the legal frameworks of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua can be used for protection, criminalization and/or digital surveillance of human rights defenders,” Peri, Luciana (coord.). -- 1a. ed.-- San José, C.R.: Fundación Acceso, (2015). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/files/2016/05/16/investigacion-privacidad-digital- fa.pdf Jorge Rolón Luna & Maricarmen Sequera, “State Communication Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Paraguay,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & TEDIC, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/paraguay Juan Camilo Rivera & Katitza Rodriguez, “State Communications Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Colombia,” Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, & Fundación Karisma, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/colombia Juan Carlos Lara and Valentina Hernández, “State Communications Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Chile,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & Derechos Digitales, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/chile Luis Fernando Garcia, “State Communications Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Mexico,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & InternetLab, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/mexico Miguel Morachimo, “State Communications Surveillance and the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Peru,” Electronic Frontier Foundation & Hiperderecho, (2016). https://necessaryandproportionate.org/country-reports/peru 3 “Comparative Analysis of Surveillance Laws and Practices in Latin America” by Katitza Rodríguez Pereda is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 4 Table of Contents Introduction.............................................................................................................................................. 6 Executive Summary................................................................................................................................... 9 1. Laws or Lawlessness.............................................................................................................................. 21 2. Legitimate Aim.....................................................................................................................................50 3. Necessity, Adequacy, & Proportionality............................................................................................ 57 4. A Culture of Secrecy and the Right to Know.................................................................................... 68 5. User Notification................................................................................................................................. 77 6. Who Watches the Watchers?................................................................................................................82 7. Public Oversight................................................................................................................................... 91 8. Integrity of Communications and Systems...................................................................................... 100 9. Safeguards Against Illegitimate Access and Right to Effective Remedy......................................... 107 10. Final Recommendations.................................................................................................................. 109 Annex I: Constitutional Protections Against Communications Surveillance.....................................114 Annex II: The Normative Power of International Human Rights Treaties....................................... 122 5 Introduction In December 1992, following a hastily-drawn sketch of a map given to him by a whistleblower, the Paraguayan lawyer Martin Almada drove to an obscure police station in the suburb of Lambaré, near Asunción. Behind the police offices, in a run-down office building, he discovered a cache of 700,000 documents, piled nearly to the ceiling. This was “the Terror Archive,” an almost complete record of the interrogations, torture, and surveillance conducted by the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. The files reported details of “Operation Condor,” a clandestine program between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil between the 1970s and 1980s.1 The military governments of those nations agreed to cooperate in sending teams into other countries to track, monitor and kill their political opponents.2 The files listed more than 50,000 deaths and 400,000 political prisoners throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.3 Stroessner's secret police used informants, telephoto cameras, and wiretaps to build a paper database of everyone that was viewed as a threat, plus their friends and associates. Almada had been tortured under this regime: his wife died from a heart attack shortly after the police played her, over the phone, the screams of her incarcerated husband. The Terror Archive shows how far a country's government might sink when unchecked by judicial authorities, public oversight bodies, and the knowledge of the general public. A modern-day Stroessner or a revamped Operation Condor, however, would have far more powerful tools at hand than just ring-binders, cameras, and wiretapped phones. Today's digital surveillance technology leaves the techniques documented in the Terror Archive in the dust. New tech like the IMSI-catcher, a portable mobile cell-tower that lets its operator sweep up all the mobile phone calls and messages within a 200 meter radius, would let the authorities collect the identities of everyone at a protest. Mobile phones tell their providers where they are at all times: government orders could demand a mobile provider retain such data and hand it to the government. That would let the authorities track the movements of everyone who owns a cellphone. It would also allow them to “time travel”: pick a target, and then look back in their history to see everywhere they had been for months or years. For targeted intimidation and entrapment, governments could take advantage of the email, social media, and messages that dominate our lives. States could deploy for the purposes of 1 Paraguay’s Archive Terror,