Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mexico Busts Drug Cartels' Private Phone Networks
NPR ^ | December 9, 2011 | Jason Beaubien

Posted on 12/10/2011 10:24:31 PM PST by JerseyanExile

The Mexican military has recently broken up several secret telecommunications networks that were built and controlled by drug cartels so they could coordinate drug shipments, monitor their rivals and orchestrate attacks on the security forces.

A network that was dismantled just last week provided cartel members with cellphone and radio communications across four northeastern states. The network had coverage along almost 500 miles of the Texas border and extended nearly another 500 miles into Mexico's interior.

Soldiers seized 167 antennas, more than 150 repeaters and thousands of cellphones and radios that operated on the system. Some of the remote antennas and relay stations were powered with solar panels.

In announcing the operation, a spokesman for the Mexican army in Monterrey, Maj. Margarito Mendez Guijon, said the clandestine system allowed organized criminals to communicate throughout all of northeast Mexico.

some_text

Command-And-Control Systems

Military officials did not specify which gang built the network, but it stretched over territory that is solidly in the hands of the Zetas cartel, one of the largest and most feared in the country.

In mid-November, the army shut down a smaller Zetas-run system in Coahuila near the Texas border. And in September, the Mexican navy pulled down 12 antennas allegedly put up by the Zetas in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

The Zetas were formed by members of the Mexican special forces who deserted to work as enforcers for the Gulf cartel in 1999. They later split from the Gulf cartel to set up their own criminal organization.

Scott Stewart, a former special agent with the U.S. State Department and now an analyst with the private intelligence firm Stratfor in Austin, Texas, says given the Zetas' military background, it makes sense that they would want to have their own radio and cellphone networks.

He says the Zetas commanders would use this system to control their troops on the ground.

"This is battlefield control for when they're having skirmishes. This is control for avoiding this roadblock, that roadblock, getting on the net [and] saying you've got a patrol coming, the Mexican marines are in such-and-such a sector heading this way," Stewart says.

Even if the Zetas encrypted these various communications networks, Stewart says Mexican and U.S. intelligence agents were certainly monitoring them. He says Mexican authorities must have decided that at this stage of the drug war, crippling the Zetas' internal communication was more important than eavesdropping on those conversations.

The Zetas are the only cartel in Mexico to have their antennas publicly destroyed by the government. But Stewart says other gangs may also have their own private communications systems. He says there have also been systems like this built by rebels in Colombia.

"Certainly in other places, in other countries, we've seen organizations like the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] set up their own radio communications network with repeaters and such in the jungles and the mountains," he says.

Kidnappings Linked To Technical Needs

Stewart says these networks are relatively simple to build and often use commercially available equipment. But the Zetas still needed technicians and engineers to design, construct and maintain their system.

And it appears that they got at least some of this expertise through kidnappings.

Over the past two years, at least 13 cellphone network technicians have been abducted in northeastern Mexico. None of them have returned alive. Two radio communication specialists working for the state-run oil company Pemex disappeared in 2010 and were later found dead. The other 11 remain missing.

In the northeastern state of Coahuila, Blanca Martinez works with a support group for family members of the disappeared. She says in 2009, a group of Nextel technicians who were repairing cell towers in Tamaulipas were abducted from their hotel. Martinez says it wasn't a normal kidnapping.

She says there has never been a ransom demand in any of the cases involving telecommunications workers. Martinez says this is quite unusual in kidnappings. Wives of several missing Nextel workers say they believe their husbands are still being forced to work for the cartels.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Mexico
KEYWORDS: drugwar; loszetas; mexico; organizedcrime; wod; wosd
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last

1 posted on 12/10/2011 10:24:45 PM PST by JerseyanExile
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

If Mexicans put this kind of industriousness to a positive use imagine how much less of a sh!thole their country would be.


2 posted on 12/10/2011 10:39:21 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

¿Puedes oírme ahora?


3 posted on 12/10/2011 10:44:02 PM PST by ZOOKER ( Exploring the fine line between cynicism and outright depression)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile
Wives of several missing Nextel workers say they believe their husbands are still being forced to work for the cartels.

Well... That's a far cry from the telecom hay days when if a Nextel, Nortel, or Ericsson engineers went missing, you knew which bars and police stations to call.

/johnny

4 posted on 12/10/2011 10:45:15 PM PST by JRandomFreeper (gone Galt)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

I’m not an expert on this type of comm, but I am in the business and I recognize “state of the art” when I see it. That stuff is “State of the art”.


5 posted on 12/10/2011 10:45:27 PM PST by Lurker (The avalanche has begun. The pebbles no longer have a vote.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

All and drug and cartel money goes to the Bambi reelection committee. One Billion dollars of laundered dollars is peanuts. Wake up you idiots.


6 posted on 12/10/2011 11:11:39 PM PST by Blado (2008: Year Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Lurker
I do land mobile radio for a government agency and even if these repeaters weren't hooked into a network it would still give cartel operatives a lot of capability on a local level.

For those of you not familiar. A repeater is a radio device that takes in comms from one radio and then rebroadcasts it out for other radios to receive. Each repeater channel on your radio transmits on one frequency and then receives on another. What this means is that instead of having to have line of sight with each guy holding a radio, you just have to have line of sight with the repeater, which is normally positioned on the top of a mountain, building, or antenna.

It gets a lot more complex, but you can use some type of connectivity to hook repeaters together as well. This would be something your local and state police would have.

7 posted on 12/10/2011 11:46:27 PM PST by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: USNBandit

One comment I would make is that the number of repeater systems seized is quite amazing, especially if that was just along the Texas border. I would be surprised if DHS has that many repeaters along that stretch of the border.


8 posted on 12/10/2011 11:48:13 PM PST by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: ZOOKER

Si! Muy bein!


9 posted on 12/11/2011 12:16:06 AM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: jmacusa

Yes, that is very well said.

Seriously, are THAT many people still on drugs?

It seemed in the 1970s that 75% of the nation was stoned at all times, nowadays not so much.

I mean who is buying all these drugs?


10 posted on 12/11/2011 12:19:23 AM PST by jocon307
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

So tomorrow they go Sprint, and laugh?


11 posted on 12/11/2011 12:41:54 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Sometimes progressives find their scripture in the penumbra of sacred bathroom stall writings (Tzar))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jmacusa

Capitalism, man. Capitalism.


12 posted on 12/11/2011 12:43:02 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Sometimes progressives find their scripture in the penumbra of sacred bathroom stall writings (Tzar))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

The Mexican military, esp. their Marines, have been doing a good job fighting the drug cartels. The cartels made a big mistake by massacring 17 soldiers they captured in a truck that was traveling on an open road.

The Mexican military will shoot to kill and do.

A hardly “hoorah” to them.


13 posted on 12/11/2011 1:02:14 AM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

“Some of the remote antennas and relay stations were powered with solar panels.”

Don’t be surprised to see US money helping out here, too.


14 posted on 12/11/2011 6:21:54 AM PST by BobL ("Heartless" and "Inhumane" FReepers for Cain - we've HAD ENOUGH)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: USNBandit
It gets a lot more complex, but you can use some type of connectivity to hook repeaters together as well. This would be something your local and state police would have.

And your local HAMS (Federally Licensed Amateur Radio Operators)

15 posted on 12/11/2011 6:33:15 AM PST by Calamari (Pass enough laws and everyone is guilty of something.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: JerseyanExile

Lies! All lies! Big Sis promised the borders were secure and Mexican cartel violence would never come across.

Yo, Mexico, didn’t you learn from us that you don’t advertise what you’ve infiltrated?


16 posted on 12/11/2011 7:03:15 AM PST by bgill (The Obama administration is staging a coup. Wake up, America, before it's too late.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CodeToad; Squantos; archy

Interesting.


17 posted on 12/11/2011 7:04:33 AM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Travis McGee

This is *really* interesting in light of Michael Yon’s recent columns on smartphones and opsec.

This is the initial column
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/death-by-smartphone.htm

This is a follow-on and includes some comments about the cartels.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/watching-you.htm


18 posted on 12/11/2011 7:15:59 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Calamari

Local HAMS have a microwave backbone?


19 posted on 12/11/2011 7:34:19 AM PST by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Travis McGee

And people call hams “dorks”. Ha! I got yer dork riiighhhttttt....OK, fine, I am a dork, too.


20 posted on 12/11/2011 7:56:19 AM PST by CodeToad (Islam needs to be banned in the US and treated as a criminal enterprise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson