On June 26, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) published a partially redacted report detailing the FBI’s efforts to mitigate the effects of a seemingly esoteric, yet pressing, threat facing U.S. government personnel: ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS). The takeaways of the report were not optimistic. The media quickly picked up the juiciest elements of the document. The Guardian highlighted a story from the report in which a hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel obtained the mobile phone number of an FBI assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, gained access to ingoing and outgoing calls as well as location data, and used Mexico City’s camera system to surveil the official and monitor the people with whom they met. According to the OIG report, the cartel “used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses.”
Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Demands Broader Data Protections | Lawfare
