The Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) was a client of the Israeli company NSO Group, which develops the spy system. Photo: Image: R3D
MEXICO CITY: During the first year of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term, the phones of at least 456 Mexicans were attacked with Pegasus spyware through the WhatsApp messaging service, at a time when the Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) was a client of the Israeli company NSO Group, which develops the spyware.
Of the 1,233 victims of Pegasus attacks that WhatsApp identified among its global users between April and May 2019, more than a third – 37% – were Mexican; another 100 were from India, and 82 were from Bahrain. This new data reinforces “the overwhelming evidence of the deployment of this spyware during the previous six-year term,” the Network in Defense of Digital Rights (R3D) and Article 19 denounced.
“It is worth noting that the 456 victims identified by WhatsApp correspond to only a two-month period (April-May 2019), which suggests the true scale of illegal surveillance in Mexico and the severity of the Mexican government’s cover-up of these abuses,” they noted.
Reports of the attacks against the 456 Mexicans come from evidence WhatsApp presented against NSO Group in a lawsuit in the United States. The US company accuses the Israeli company of using flaws in its messaging service to install Pegasus on victims’ phones. Apple also sued NSO Group for installing Pegasus through vulnerabilities in its phones’ operating systems.
Already in 2022, the journalistic investigation “Spy Army,” in which Proceso participated, revealed that the Ministry of National Defense, which had been NSO Group’s top international client – it acquired Pegasus in 2010 – continued to operate the spyware from the Military Intelligence Center (CMI) during López Obrador’s six-year term.
During Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, three government agencies – the Defense Ministry, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and the Center for National Security Research (CISEN) – used Pegasus extensively. The journalistic investigation “Pegasus Project,” in which Proceso also participated, showed that the largest number of attacks recorded worldwide between 2016 and 2017 originated in Mexico.
On several occasions, López Obrador maintained that his government had ended the espionage practices of his predecessors. However, faced with mounting evidence – including statements by NSO Group executives that the Defense Ministry continued to purchase the spy system from it – the Tabasco native acknowledged that some agencies within his government were conducting “intelligence” work, but not espionage.
These claims were challenged by evidence that the Army had used Pegasus to attack the phones of at least three journalists, human rights defenders – including lawyers from the Agustin Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro ProDH) – public officials, and Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez himself, then undersecretary of Human Rights in the López Obrador administration.
The former president had also pledged to release “all information” related to Pegasus, including contracts that the Defense Ministry signed with companies owned by Israeli citizen Uri Emmanuel Ansbacher – then Pegasus distributor in the region – but ultimately backed down.
The Army, for its part, has been defying a court order for more than nine months to hand over the contracts, in compliance with a resolution by the now-defunct National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information, and Protection of Personal Data (INAI).
Original article by Mathieu Tourliere, Proceso, April 14, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.