Cartels Are Using a Police Database to Track and Target Their Enemies

Mexican criminal organizations are allegedly tapping intelligence and security software, that is also used by the government, to locate and disappear rivals and hide their crimes, according to several sources within Mexican law enforcement and cartel members who spoke with VICE News.

The software, called Titan, has been used by several Mexican state governments, a source familiar with the program said. Its users can geolocate persons across the country in real time, access minute-to-minute location logs, and obtain official identification documents, amongst other private information, according to sources. 

The different services available through Titan are being advertised on the black market for around 10,000 Mexican pesos (roughly $600) to 180,000 pesos ($9,000). They are being offered via Whatsapp groups managed by a “council” which includes both members of criminal organizations and Mexican state officials, according to one of the group’s admins speaking with VICE News. The council approves members of the list, as well as the provision of services. 

Titan can be accessed in one of two ways— either directly through a Mexican official, mostly a state police commander, who takes the order of services requested and delivers on an agreed time, or by obtaining a log in.

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“The platform is Mexican. It was developed here in Mexico but people from Israel worked on the backend,” a source inside a criminal organization told VICE News in a phone interview. We were unable to verify who, in fact, is behind the technology and its running.

Mexico’s government has in recent years also used the Israeli-made spyware Pegasus to spy on human rights activists and journalists, according to reports by the international media.

Titan uses a large Mexican database to obtain personal information on individuals and uses GPS technology to track a specific cell phone using either the phone number or the phone’s ID, according to the same source. 

“The database is composed of other larger databases like the INE [Mexican voter id], Telcel, Telmex, credit bureaus, bank statements, phone apps logs, emails, amongst many others,” the source said. 

VICE News reached out to Mexican state governments to confirm the use of Titan software, but no one responded to the request. 

It is unclear who is behind Titan. The platform is constantly changing servers, probably to avoid getting tracked. The last two server changes, according to the website’s metadata, were made three and eight months ago. 

Titan does not offer any other details or contact information on its login screen other than a secure email.

“The platform is not in distribution. It’s a closed app builded to help track criminals for some intelligence officials. I’m aware that some users used the information for a bad use. Those accounts have been canceled,” an unknown person replied to an email sent by VICE News.

A U.S. military intelligence officer who asked to remain anonymous since he didn’t have clearance to speak on behalf of the U.S. government said Titan is using “open protocols” to access live locations on targeted individuals. 

“They use the SS7 protocol, basically the same protocol used by any other phone company in the world, so they don’t really use malware to access someone’s location,” he said. 

SS7 is a communication protocol needed by mobile service providers all around the world to be able to communicate among different phone companies. The protocol has been widely criticized in the past for lacking enough security and making users vulnerable to tracking. 

The cartel source who shared Titan’s login credentials with VICE News said he doesn’t know who is behind the company but he detailed how this technology is getting to Mexican law enforcement agencies. 

“They don’t buy the software, what they buy is licenses. For example, I can assure you that I sold 1,000 licenses to the Jalisco state police and some 500 to the Nuevo León state police,” the source said. 

The licenses weren’t acquired in an official capacity, but were purchased by state police chiefs, according to two Jalisco state police officers speaking with VICE News. 

“Our comandante bought the licenses with money assigned to our operative budget, but not in an official capacity, because this would require much more bureaucracy. I’m not sure if he listed the money as used for operational software or what, but he gave us the logins after buying them,” one of the Jalisco state police officers said. 

The same cartel source said that he gets access to Titan platform through the email listed on the access website, and that he has never met any of the people behind it. 

“They sent me a payment method to acquire the licenses and then I re-sell them to whoever wants one. I know that some law enforcement agencies are also re-selling licenses or services to other cartel members, but that’s on them,” he said. 

VICE News obtained access to a log in account to try the service and witnessed how easy it was to obtain personal information from a single name. 

By entering a first and last name, or a phone number, the platform offers access to a person’s Mexican official ID, including address, phone number, a log of calls made and received, a security background check showing if the person has an active or past warrant or has been in prison, credit information and the option to geolocate the phone entered, according to what VICE News witnessed using the platform. 

VICE News was only able to see information in Mexico and unable to confirm Titan’s tracking capabilities within the U.S. 

The main screen of the database shows the name of the software ‘Titan’, a space to enter the login credentials and a support email at the bottom. Once an account is obtained, a screen appears offering different services: geolocation, a list of calls made from a single cell phone number, analyzed call sheets (a crossing of the different calls made to provide a network of contacts called), car number plates, background checks, mobile phone statements, and data from Plataforma México, a database of criminal records with access to current and former security officials. 

“The use of this technology highlights the importance of regulating the access to people’s metadata and communications. By opening these kinds of accesses even to law enforcement, they open a door for Mexican cartels to an unregulated technology,” Veridiana Almonti, Latin America coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-for profit organization looking over digital privacy rights, told VICE News. 

Almonti said that by using Titan’s platform, criminal organizations are upping their detection capabilities. 

“They [the cartels] don’t even have to use attacks to create vulnerabilities, but they are using the legal path to access all of this information including live tracking,” she said. 

A source inside the Jalisco New Generation Cartel who spoke anonymously with VICE News said his organization had been using this service for at least six years.  

“This is the easiest way to locate someone or to know about their relatives if they are hiding,” he said. 

The number of people reported missing in Mexico is at a record high of 100,000, according to official figures. Government data which goes back to 1964 shows that almost all the disappearances have occurred since 2007, when then-President Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s "war on drugs”—a government crackdown on organized crime and drug-trafficking. The United Nations has called the number of people missing in Mexico "a human tragedy of enormous proportions”.

But the source offering Titan’s services said it is more widely used by criminals to commit crimes than it is by authorities to locate missing persons or criminals. 

“We know the authorities sometimes use the platform, this is what it was supposed to be used for, but at the end they also provide access to criminals, so what is the use?” the source said. 

The cartel operative said that most of the time, when they kidnap someone either for ransom or for killing, they use signal jammers, a hardware used to block mobile phone’s communication. 

“We carry them on our vehicles when we are going to get someone and as soon as we have him or her we start the jammer, so they can’t use the same software against us,” he said. 

The source handling Titan’s services said that these jammers are also offered through these WhatsApp groups.

“It is mind-blowing how the whole thing operates. The software, the jammers, everything is acquired by Mexican officials and then offered to cartels or other independent criminals. And more than that, the services also include deleting criminal records or charging someone with a crime,” he said. 

The source allowed VICE News to review the services and prices offered to delete someone’s criminal records: 50,000 Mexican pesos [$2,300 dollars] if the crimes are posted on Plataforma Mexico—a database of several Mexican law enforcement agencies. It costs the same amount to erase crimes posted on state police platforms, and to post fake charges against someone. 

The software’s use by the cartels calls into question who, in fact, is calling the shots in Mexican territory. The cartel operative said. “It is impossible for them to find someone if we don’t want him to be found.”