Unidentified computer hackers associated with the Sinaloa drug cartel were able to garner phone records from the FBI, then used Mexico City surveillance cameras to compromise key informants and witnesses so they could murder them back in 2018, a new report showed.
This information was disclosed to the Justice Department in an Inspector General audit of the FBI’s efforts to “Mitigate the Effects of Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance,” according to Fox News.
The report cited the case against Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who used to lead the cartel, but who was extradited to the United States back in 2017. While federal authorities were working the case, they were alerted to the hiring of a hacker “who offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices.”
The hacker “had observed people going in and out of the United States Embassy in Mexico City and identified ‘people of interest’ for the cartel, including the FBI Assistant Legal Attache (ALA T), and then was able to use the ALA T’s mobile phone number to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with the ALAT’s phone,” the audit read.
“According to the FBI, the hacker also used Mexico City’s camera system to follow the ALAT through the city and identify people the ALAT met with,” the report continued. “According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses.”
The audit also highlighted how modern technology has “made it easier than ever for less-sophisticated nations and criminal enterprises to identify and exploit vulnerabilities created by” data from everyday items like smartphones and personal computers.
Some within the U.S. intel community, including CIA officials, described the threat as being “existential.”
This should send a message to the U.S. that computers have become the new battlefield. And we are still vulnerable in this area.
Even if the federal government expanded funding and continued using all the technology at its disposal, drug cartels can still gain the upper hand.
One of the greatest investments the country can make — aside from cyberterrorism units and the training of current agents — is specialized education for our young people.
By training a new generation of hackers to counteract these anonymous killers, we ensure that there’s a future firewall against murder, financial crimes, blackmail, and other efforts to harm the nation.
This would require major education reform that removes propaganda from the classroom and restores a culture that values merit-based achievement.
The audit also revealed the lengths a drug cartel will go if they see someone standing in their way.
President Donald Trump understood this threat when he issued an executive order designating certain cartels as terrorist organizations.
Trump’s action rightfully stated, “International cartels constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime, with activities encompassing: convergence between themselves and a range of extra-hemispheric actors, from designated foreign-terror organizations to antagonistic foreign governments.”
It also explained how they’ve developed “complex adaptive systems, characteristic of entities engaged in insurgency and asymmetric warfare” while managing to infiltrate “into foreign governments across the Western Hemisphere.”
“The Cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs,” the order read.
Trump added, “The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States.”
They might as well be a rouge state. And they’re hellbent on handing out human misery for higher profit and personal power.
The only answer is to eliminate them through any means necessary, including the continued advance of hacking and counterterrorism technology at every level.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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