Colombian Agencies used US Funding and Surveillance Software

FOR has learned that Colombian government agencies intercepted more than 150 email accounts of human rights defenders, trade union leaders, labor organizations, academics and journalists, including two FOR email accounts.

Fourteen US organizations sent letters to US Ambassador William Brownfield and to
Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguarán last week to protest the intercepts and urge erasure of records intercepted. Some 500 people have written to the State Department this month to demand a stop to this spying. To join them by sending a fax, click here.

The intercepts were first ordered on December 19, 2006 in response to a request made by the police intelligence agency, SIJIN. SIJIN issued identical email intercept requests in September 2007 and November 2008, all granted by the 12th Anti-Terrorism Specialized Prosecutor and assigned to be carried out by the SIJIN-MEBOG. Human rights defenders reportedly monitored included the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Movement for Victims of States Crimes (such as spokesperson Ivan Cepeda), the Colombian Network for Action on Free Trade, the Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, the Yira Castro human rights organization, and the US branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).

Intercepting the communications of human rights organizations and others violates the right to privacy of email account holders. It also seriously places at risk the work and security of members of affected organizations. The fear that such interception engenders may also promote self-censorship by human rights defenders and therefore impact their right to freedom of expression. Finally, it may be a harbinger of worse to come for the affected individuals, such as unfounded criminal prosecutions based on the data collected.

Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguarán has announced a criminal investigation of prosecutors involved in ordering the intercept orders, as well as the dismissal of one of them, Jorge Iván Piedrahita Montoya. Recently, Piedrahita ordered the disproportionate inspection of all databases and books of five universities from 1992-2008, allegedly to find evidence of students and teachers connected to subversive groups, leading to a number of arrests, which the Attorney General labeled “absurd and criminal.” However, the Deputy Attorney General publicly supported this order.

Moreover, the Defense Ministry established policies that offered incentives for obtaining sensitive information about victims of the armed conflict from humanitarian groups. According to Defense Ministry Directive 29/2005, signed by then-Defense Minister Camilo Ospina Bernal in November 2005, the ministry offered 1.5 million pesos for each hard drive, laptop and CPU “with information of interest to state intelligence” agencies.

In June 2007, FOR, Corporación Yira Castro and Justapaz were the victims of break-ins and robbery of computers containing files from those organizations’ work with victims of political violence, as the human rights organization CODHES had been earlier. Despite repeated requests that these break-ins be investigated by the Attorney General’s Human Rights unit, this was not done. The investigations have stalled, and no one has been charged for those attacks.

Police and military agencies consistently treat legitimate civil society activity as evidence of insurgent activity, and government authorities fail to constrain or punish such treatment. Statements by high government officials accusing human rights defenders and opposition politicians of collaboration with the FARC create a climate that supports this treatment. Recent such statements include President Uribe’s accusation that Human Rights Watch’s Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco is an “accomplice” and “defender” of the FARC.

SIJIN agents have targeted legitimate activities such as community and student organizing, environmental activism, and art work. As a result of this attitude and email intercepts, environmental activist Edison Javier Reyes Roa was detained on November 15, 2008, and is being prosecuted for carrying out community organizing around issues such as the death of children in a Bogota brick factory. Prosecutors perceived such activity as “aimed at undermining the prestige of the [Colombian] police,” according to a report by SIJIN.

Human rights organizations, such as CINEP, have documented serious violations to the due process of students and community organizers detained in the process, including Reyes, William Javier Díaz Ramírez of the District University; Hugo Giovanni Hilarión, member of university group CORPOCRISTAL; María Antonia Espitia; and National University student Reyes López Ipayú.

The United States bears significant responsibility in this matter, given that the agencies involved in these actions - National Police, Defense Ministry and Attorney General’s office – are recipients of extensive U.S. assistance. In 2006, the State Department awarded a $5 million contract to Oakley Networks of San Mateo, California, to provide “internet surveillance software” to the SIJIN. As a result, U.S. taxpayers were paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate U.S. and Colombian humanitarian organizations.

We believe that Colombian officials must:

• Investigate and prosecute all public officials involved in ordering the email intercepts;

• Discipline those who ordered the intercepts and investigate whether the judicial police continue to carry out wiretapping of legitimate civil society activities;
• Conduct a transparent investigation into the intercepts, with results shared with those affected, to reveal what information was intercepted, who ordered the intercepts, a complete list of who was intercepted, where this information currently resides and for what it has been used. Furthermore, ensure that data collected about human rights organizations is erased from any database;
• Clearly and publicly instruct police and military intelligence to cease persecution of legitimate activities such as human rights, labor, trade and environmental activism.