AT&T receives a sanction for failing to comply with the intervention of private communications

The AT&T telephone company did not collaborate with the Government as it is supposed to do in the interception of private communications for reasons of security and justice. It has earned a sanction from the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT).

The regulatory body for the sector, the IFT, unanimously resolved that AT&T failed to comply with the obligations imposed by article 190 of the Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law (LFTR), particularly with sections II and III.

The IFT’s decision means an economic sanction for AT&T of a few million pesos. The IFT is empowered to impose sanctions of 1.1% up to 4% of the operator’s income in the year corresponding to non-compliance (article 298 subsection C section V of the LFTR). This case is from 2016.

The resolution of the IFT (Federal Institute of Telecommunications) was taken in the plenary session of last November 16 and the file P/IFT/161122/637 was cataloged, first, as “reserved” and then, as public.

More details of the resolution will be known after December 10, when the transcripts of the session are made public, in which the four commissioners of the organization participated: Ramiro Camacho Castillo, Javier Juárez Mojica, Arturo Robles Rovalo and Sóstenes Díaz González.

Article 190 obliges telecommunications companies to save data and metadata of their clients’ communications to deliver them to the security and justice authorities if required.

The authorities can also request telephone companies to locate their clients’ telephone lines in real time. Failure of the telephone companies to deliver the geolocation can put the life of one or more people at risk.

Article 190 of the Federal Telecommunications and Radio Broadcasting Law (LFTR) is part of a chapter entitled “On Security and Justice Obligations”, referring to the obligation of telephone companies to collaborate with the Government by recording personal data, metadata of the communications of mobile phone users and registering the geographic positioning of the phone lines in real time.

The Telcel-Telmex-Telnor complex —owned by Carlos Slim Helú’s América Móvil— and AT&T —of US origin and directed in Mexico by Mónica Aspe Bernal— are the operators that receive the most requests for collaboration from security and justice authorities.

In 2016, the year of AT&T’s non-compliance now sanctioned by the IFT, this company received 10,763 requests for collaboration with the authorities, of which it provided information in only 54% of the cases (5,806 requests rejected).

The América Móvil triad, on the other hand, received 57,677 requests and delivered the information in 100% of the cases, according to the IFT transparency reports requested by this reporter. The IFT stopped collecting this information in 2018, leaving the comptrollership over this mechanism of intervention of private communications in Mexico in opacity.