MEXICO TO BOOST TAPPING OF PHONES AND E-MAIL WITH U.S. AID

Calderon Is Seeking to Expand Monitoring of Drug Gangs; Washington
Also May Have Access to the Data.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico is expanding its ability to tap telephone calls
and e-mail using money from the U.S. government, a move that
underlines how the country's conservative government is increasingly
willing to cooperate with the United States on law enforcement.

The expansion comes as President Felipe Calderon is pushing to amend
the Mexican Constitution to allow officials to tap phones without a
judge's approval in some cases. Calderon argues that the government
needs the authority to combat drug gangs, which have killed hundreds
of people this year.

Mexican authorities for years have been able to wiretap most
telephone conversations and tap into e-mail, but the new $3-million
Communications Intercept System being installed by Mexico's Federal
Investigative Agency will expand their reach.

The system will allow authorities to track cellphone users as they
travel, according to contract specifications. It includes extensive
storage capacity and will allow authorities to identify callers by
voice. The system, scheduled to begin operation this month, was paid
for by the U.S. State Department and sold by Verint Systems Inc., a
politically well-connected firm based in Melville, N.Y., that
specializes in electronic surveillance.

Although information about the system is publicly available, the
matter has drawn little attention so far in the United States or
Mexico. The modernization program is described in U.S. government
documents, including the contract specifications, reviewed by The Times.

They suggest that Washington could have access to information derived
from the surveillance. Officials of both governments declined to
comment on that possibility.

"It is a government of Mexico operation funded by the U.S.," said
Susan Pittman, of the State Department's Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Queries should be directed to
the Mexican government, she said.

Calderon's office declined to comment.

But the contract specifications say the system is designed to allow
both governments to "disseminate timely and accurate, actionable
information to each country's respective federal, state, local,
private and international partners."

Calderon has been lobbying for more authority to use electronic
surveillance against drug violence, which has threatened his ability
to govern. Despite federal troops posted in nine Mexican states, the
violence continues as rival smugglers fight over shipping routes to
the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as for control of Mexican port cities
and inland marijuana and poppy growing regions.

Nonetheless, the prospect of U.S. involvement in surveillance could
be extremely sensitive in Mexico, where the United States
historically has been viewed by many as a bullying and intrusive
neighbor. U.S. government agents working in Mexico maintain a low
profile to spare their government hosts any political fallout.

It's unclear how broad a net the new surveillance system will cast:
Mexicans speak regularly by phone, for example, with millions of
relatives living in the U.S. Those conversations appear to be fair
game for both governments.

Legal experts say that prosecutors with access to Mexican wiretaps
could use the information in U.S. courts. U.S. Supreme Court
decisions have held that 4th Amendment protections against illegal
wiretaps do not apply outside the United States, particularly if the
surveillance is conducted by another country, Georgetown University
law professor David Cole said.

Mexico's telecommunications monopoly, Telmex, controlled by Carlos
Slim Helu, the world's second-wealthiest individual, has not received
official notice of the new system, which will intercept its
electronic signals, a spokeswoman said this week.

"Telmex is a firm that always complies with laws and rules set by the
Mexican government," she said.

Calderon recently asked Mexico's Congress to amend the country's
constitution and allow federal prosecutors free rein to conduct
searches and secretly record conversations among people suspected of
what the government defines as serious crimes.

His proposal would eliminate the current legal requirement that
prosecutors gain approval from a judge before installing any wiretap,
the vetting process that will for now govern use of the new system's
intercepts. Calderon says the legal changes are needed to turn the
tide in the battle against the drug gangs.

"The purpose is to create swift investigative measures against
organized crime," Calderon wrote senators when introducing his
proposed constitutional amendments in March. "At times, turning to
judicial authorities hinders or makes investigations impossible."

But others argued that the proposed changes would undermine
constitutional protections and open the door to the type of domestic
spying that has plagued many Latin American countries. Colombian
President Alvaro Uribe last week ousted a dozen generals, including
the head of intelligence, after police were found to be wiretapping
public figures, including members of his government.

"Calderon's proposal is limited to 'urgent cases' and organized
crime, but the problem is that when the judiciary has been put out of
the loop, the attorney general can basically decide these however he
wants to," said John Ackerman, a law professor at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico. "Without the intervention of a
judge, the door swings wide open to widespread abuse of basic civil liberties."

The proposal is being considered by a panel of the Mexican Senate. It
is strongly opposed by members of the leftist Democratic Revolution
Party. Members of Calderon's National Action Party have been lobbying
senators from the former ruling party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, for support.

Renato Sales, a former deputy prosecutor for Mexico City, said
Calderon's desire to expand federal policing powers to combat
organized crime was parallel to the Bush administration's use of a
secret wiretapping program to fight terrorism.

"Suddenly anyone suspected of organized crime is presumed guilty and
treated as someone without any constitutional rights," said Sales,
now a law professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of
Mexico. "And who will determine who is an organized crime suspect?
The state will."

Federal lawmaker Cesar Octavio Camacho, president of the justice and
human rights commission in the lower house of Congress, said he too
worried about prosecutorial abuse.

"Although the proposal stems from the president's noble intention of
efficiently fighting organized crime," he said, "the remedy seems
worse than the problem."