Mexico consolidates, without much public debate, a model of mass surveillance that erodes privacy, freedom of expression and the right to defense against abuses of power. The pieces of this system have been placed one after another, until forming a control structure that is legalized in stages and normalized in discourse.
The most recent of these are the reforms to the Federal Tax Code (article 30-B), approved in Congress, which grant authorities the ability to access, permanently and in real time, digital platforms to obtain information “that allows verifying due compliance with tax obligations”, and to block said platforms if they refuse to grant said access.
These modifications violate the right to privacy and open the door to censorship of digital content. What are presented as tools to improve tax collection capabilities become true instruments of surveillance and control. The authorities will be able to access personal data without judicial supervision, and order the blocking of information platforms if they do not cooperate. In practice, it means that the State could monitor, sanction or censor with a very wide margin of discretion.
These reforms are part of a broader legislative package, enacted last July, that reconfigures the state surveillance apparatus. Included in this set were the modifications to the General Law of the National Public Security System, the General Population Law, the Federal Telecommunications Law, the Law on Disappearances, the National Guard Law; as well as the creation of the Law of the National Investigation and Intelligence System in Public Security Matters. This entire legal framework allows cross-access and real-time access to public and private records and databases, and creates the mandatory Biometric CURP. The official discourse speaks of “administrative efficiency” and “security”, but in reality what is being built is a permanent infrastructure of citizen control.
This regulatory framework represents the new face of espionage, one that is no longer clandestine, but legalized. What was previously done by secret agencies or private corporations on the margins of the law, is now done by the State with legislative approval. The problem is who monitors, with what controls and for what purposes.
In parallel, the legislative restriction of the mechanisms with which these same people can defend themselves is consummated. The recent reforms to the Amparo Law dilute the figure of legitimate interest and suspension, thanks to which people, organizations and groups had managed to stop unconstitutional norms and acts. All in a context of cooptation of the Judiciary.
In other words, two regressive movements are simultaneously consolidated: a State that expands its surveillance powers and a weakened Judiciary to contain it. The result is a profound power imbalance. Privacy becomes a legal fiction and citizens are left without protection—literally and legally—against institutional abuses.
The official argument is well-known: “there is nothing to fear if nothing bad is done.” But that logic is the heart of all control regimes. Privacy is not the refuge of crime, but the indispensable space of freedom. Furthermore, it is fully documenting – at least in the six-year terms of Peña Nieto and López Obrador – that high-end espionage tools (such as Pegasus) are preferably used against critical voices and that their anti-crime effectiveness has been null.
Mexico does not reach this point gradually. He does it step by step, with the complicity of political silence and social apathy. The idea that security and efficiency justify intrusion is normalized. It appeals to the goodness and moral superiority of those who make up the current hegemonic political project. But a State that knows everything ends up believing that it can do everything, and that is a source of abuse.
The country’s digital future cannot be built on the renunciation of privacy and denying the consequences on the rest of our public freedoms. If the “spy laws” advance and the defense mechanisms are extinguished, we people will be trapped under a government that claims to speak for the people, while monitoring, in real time and without controls, their every move.