Mexico Upset As U.S. Buys Voter Data

MEXICO CITY (AP) April 23, 2004 - Mexico is upset about American security agencies' use of confidential information on Mexican voters and a top legislator is urging Mexican Interior Secretary Santiago Creel to raise the issue when meeting with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge this week.

Sen. Fidel Herrera said Tuesday that Creel should use the border meetings to ask Ridge to stop using the information.

"It would be a good time to bring up the alleged purchase of Mexican voter rolls,'' Herrera told the government news agency Notimex. The goal would be to get U.S. companies and government agencies to stop using the information, said Herrera, a member of the former ruling PRI party.

The data scandal has been front-page news in Mexico since The Associated Press reported earlier this month that a U.S. company bought information including Mexican voter rolls containing 65 million names from an unidentified seller in Mexico, then sold it to U.S. government agencies, including immigration and police, who have used it to track Mexicans.

Creel has called the sale a crime and promised an investigation.

The Mexican databases were just a portion of digital dossiers collected on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries and sold to the U.S. government in the past 18 months -- apparently without their knowledge or consent.

The U.S. company maintains it bought the data legally, under contracts with subcontractors who certified they followed privacy laws.