What started with a simple public records request became a journey into the absurd depths of Mexican bureaucracy. But we emerged victorious, and learned a lot about how a city experimented with a dangerous surveillance tool.
Filing public records requests for government information is a vital tool that EFF uses to shed light on law enforcement use of surveillance technologies. When a government agency hides crucial information about their surveillance policies and practices, it harms the democratic rights of the people whose data is collected and exploited.
In the United States, we rely on the Freedom of Information Act and state-level open government laws to obtain records from government agencies, but many other countries also have similar public records laws—including Mexico.
Mexican and U.S. authorities frequently collaborate and share resources, and surveillance techniques deployed by law enforcement on one side of the border often flow across to the other. In 2021, we investigated this flow of technology starting with a predictive policing program that we learned that police had launched in General Escobedo, a city in the border state of Nuevo Leon.
Predicción Delicitva–Predictive Policing, Mexican-style
Predictive policing refers to using algorithms and sometimes artificial intelligence to predict where crimes may occur or to identify who might commit them. These systems ingest a variety of data sources—such as surveillance data, crime reports, emergency calls, criminal records and social media—depending on which vendor is providing the technology.
This technology is flawed pseudo-science at best: the public safety equivalent of snake oil. Because the technology feeds off a biased and flawed data loop, it can result in pushing police toward communities that already are over-policed, such as communities of color, unhoused individuals, and immigrants.
We knew that General Escobedo, a municipality on the outskirts of Monterrey, had a predictive policing project because a government official publicly s
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