drug trade – Noise

Surveillance Used by a Drug Cartel

Bruce Schneier — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:06:42 +0000

Once you build a surveillance system, you can’t control who will use it:

A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in 2018, according to a new US justice department report.

The incident was disclosed in a justice department inspector general’s audit of the FBI’s efforts to mitigate the effects of “ubiquitous technical surveillance,” a term used to describe the global proliferation of cameras and the thriving trade in vast stores of communications, travel, and location data...

Friday Squid Blogging: Operation Squid

Bruce Schneier — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 21:08:32 +0000

Operation Squid found 1.3 tons of cocaine hidden in frozen fish. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here.

Mexican Drug Cartels with High-Tech Spyware

Bruce Schneier — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:19:54 +0000

Sophisticated spyware, sold by surveillance tech companies to Mexican government agencies, are ending up in the hands of drug cartels:

As many as 25 private companies — including the Israeli company NSO Group and the Italian firm Hacking Team — have sold surveillance software to Mexican federal and state police forces, but there is little or no regulation of the sector — and no way to control where the spyware ends up, said the officials.

Lots of details in the article. The cyberweapons arms business is immoral in many ways. This is just one of them...