Twitter: The Safest Place for Citizen Journalists in Mexico

Mashable: Fran Berkman

A cohort of Twitter users with fake names and profile pictures have become a trusted source of information regarding drug cartel violence in Mexico.

These citizen journalists choose to remain anonymous to avoid violent backlash from gang members, but their reports have become increasingly influential.

On Jan. 8, a team from Microsoft Research published a paper called "The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare," which details a social media study conducted over the past two years. Their main finding was that as Mexicans increasingly turn to Twitter for reports of violence, a core of mostly anonymous yet trusted curators have led the dissemination of public safety information.

"You find this small cluster of people, whom we call curators, who tend to be really well-regarded in their cities," Andrés Monroy-Hernández, one of the paper's five co-authors, tells Mashable. "These particular curators are those that have a lot of followers, which means that they're somewhat trusted by the community."

In the paper, the authors discuss how difficult it was to contact and interview the curators, who feel the work puts their lives in danger. Read more. 

Google takes aim at Mexico's drug cartels

AP: Martha Mendoza. WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — Google, so far, has won the search engine wars. Now it wants to target international crime, including Mexico's powerful drug cartels.

Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.'s executive chairman, has taken a keen interest in Mexico, where more than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in 2006. Schmidt recently visited most of Mexico's most violent cities, Ciudad Juarez, where civic leaders asked if he could help.

"Defeated, helpless, these people have been so hardened in their experience with cartels that they have lost battles and they have lost hope," Schmidt told a conference on international crime this week. "They were looking for a universal hammer to protect them. For me the answer was obvious. It was technology." Read more.

Drug War and the Arts: Mexican city bans Tigres del Norte for drug songs

The Huffington Post: "The capital of Mexico's Chihuahua state has indefinitely banned the famous norteno group Los Tigres del Norte from playing in the city after the band sang ballads glorifying drug traffickers during a weekend concert.

There have been other attempts in Mexico to ban the ballads known as "narcocorridos," but seldom have they affected a mainstream group as popular as Los Tigres.

The band has been a mainstay of norteno music for decades, with hits like "Contrabando y Traicion" (Contraband and Betrayal) and "Jefe de Jefes" (Boss of Bosses).

"The musical group will not get permits for future shows in the city limits, until such time as authorities decide otherwise," the city said in a statement.
The Chihuahua city government said the band violated a three-month-old city ordinance prohibiting songs that glorify traffickers, and that the concert's organizers would be fined "at least 20,000 pesos" ($1,585)." read more

Drug War and Social Media: Facts also fall victim in Mexico 'social media' killings

latimes.com: "Four people have been killed in gruesome fashion in Mexico since September for posting about drug cartels on social-media websites, the headlines and news reports say.

Trouble is, the reports could be wrong. Information is the latest battleground in Mexico's drug war, as a string of brutal deaths in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo has produced alarming reports that social networks are under attack by the infamous Zetas cartel. Most of the reports, however, are not built on verifiable facts. And facts have become a rare commodity in many regions of Mexico that are dominated by drug cartels." read more

Drug War and Social Media: 'Twitter Manifesto' Confronts Gang Threats to Mexico Bloggers

InSight Crime: "A team of social media users in Mexico have written a "Twitter Manifesto" in reaction to the latest killing of an alleged online chat forum administrator. Some of their demands are untenable, raising questions about what actions bloggers can really take to protect themselves. Speaking in the name of bloggers and Twitter users in violence-ridden states like Tamaulipas, the manifesto gives voice to the apprehension and anger circulating through some online media networks in Mexico.

... Within the buzzing community of social media users along the Mexico-U.S. border, comes the "Twitter Manifesto." But when the document asks the government to better garantee "cybersecurity" and "freedom of speech" online, it only highlights the difficulty of enforcing these requests. ... Recognizing the futility of asking Mexican authorities for more protection from the threat, some have turned to issuing best practices. On another forum -- the Frontera listserve -- security consultant Gordon Housworth shared suggestions on how social media users can better protect themselves from the threat of criminal gangs." read more

Drug War: Mexican Blogger Decapitated; Cartels’ War on Social Media Spreads

Wired.com: "The moderator of a popular Mexican social network has been murdered, allegedly for tipping off the authorities about the local drug cartel. Nicknamed “Rascatripas” or “Scraper” (literally “Fiddler”) on the network Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, the 35-year-old appears to have been handcuffed, tortured, decapitated and dumped ... Written a blanket in black ink: “Hi I’m ‘Rascatripas’ and this happened to me because I didn’t understand I shouldn’t post things on social networks.”

The discovery of the body Wednesday morning brings the total number of bloggers and social media networkers apparently killed in the past three months by organized crime in Mexico — and in the border city of Nuevo Laredo — to four." read more

Drug War and Social Media: Contradictions mount in Anonymous threat to Zetas

The Los Angeles Times Mexico reporting team looks at the Anonymous story.

latimes.com: " A story that at first seemed to point ominously to a dangerous new development in Mexico's drug war was spiraling into confusion Friday as social-media users claiming ties to the hackers group Anonymous announced -- and then retracted -- a threat against the Zetas cartel in Mexico.

... If #OpCartel does not materialize, the buzz over the threat would raise thorny questions about mainstream media coverage of such threats and the amplification of random or unfounded claims made on YouTube and Twitter." read more

Drug War - Social Media: Facts Blur as Anonymous and Zeta Cartel’s Feud Ends in a Draw

The latest--but is it the last--installment in the Anonymous vs. the Zetas story.

NYTimes.com: " Some bloggers and Twitter users claiming to be part of the hacker movement Anonymous now say they have abandoned plans to expose collaborators working with the Zetas crime syndicate because the friend they say the gang kidnapped has been released. Other self-identified Anonymous hackers say they will eventually undermine the country’s drug cartels by exposing corrupt officials, but that threats from the Zetas, along with the friend’s release, have pushed them to declare that the current project — OpCartel — is dead.

Some outside critics, meanwhile, wonder if the whole story was a sham. Was anyone kidnapped, they ask. Where is the evidence? Did Anonymous really have the goods on corrupt officials that it claimed to have? “We don’t have enough facts to draw any conclusion at this point,” said Fred Burton, an analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm that was one of the first to scrutinize OpCartel. “It’s amazing to me, this whole set of circumstances.”" read more

Drug War and Social Media: Anonymous vs. Zetas Amid Mexico's Cartel Violence

An analytic look at the continuing discussion regarding the threat by the online hacking group, Anonymous, to expose members of the Zetas.

STRATFOR: "The online activist collective Anonymous posted a message on the Internet on Oct. 31 saying it would continue its campaign against Mexican criminal cartels and their government supporters despite the risks.

With Nov. 5 approaching, and at least some elements of Anonymous not backing down on their threats to Los Zetas, we thought it would be useful to provide some context to the present conflict between Anonymous and Los Zetas and to address some of its potential implications." read more

Anonymous retreats from Mexico drug cartel confrontation

guardian.co.uk: "Plans by the hacker collective Anonymous to expose collaborators with Mexico's bloody Zetas drug cartel – a project it dubbed "#OpCartel" – have fallen into disarray, with some retreating from the idea of confronting the killers while others say that the kidnap of an Anonymous hacker, the incident meant to have spawned the scheme, never happened.

The apparent climbdown by the group came as one security company, Stratfor, claimed that the cartel was hiring its own security experts to track the hackers down – which could have resulted in "abduction, injury and death" for anyone it traced.

Two hacker members of "Operation Cartel", which said earlier this week that it would expose members of the murderous cartel, have now indicated that they are stopping their scheme to identify collaborators and members because they don't want anyone to be killed as a result." read more

Drug War: Anonymous Hackers Challenge Mexican Crime Syndicate

More on the Anonymous announcement that it will reveal cartel members' identities

NYTimes.com: "... on Monday, in the wake of a security firm’s report highlighting the potential loss of life from naming names, there were more mixed messages (from Anonymous). A steady stream of posts on Twitter referring to OpCartel revealed an intense debate over the benefits and costs of moving forward. On Twitter and in private e-mails — members of Mexico’s underground online media said — there appeared to be a widening gap between supporters and opponents of Anonymous’s mission." read more

A Mexican View: Authoritarian Despair

A column by John Ackerman on the passage of a law in the state of Veracruz punishing the use of social media to spread information if it proves to be false and creates public alarm and disorder. This law was a reaction to the so-called "Twitter Terroists."  Ackerman is a researcher in the Institute for Judicial Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and editorial director of the Mexican Law Review. 
Translated by AMB. Original in Spanish

MEXICO CITY, Proceso. The regime reacts in a desperate manner to its obvious failure in achieving the goal of controlling the violence and social unrest that runs through the country. Instead of solving the underlying problems, daily it deepens its repressive and propagandistic strategy. Recall that six months ago, on March 24, more than 50 media outlets signed an agreement for the coverage of violence within the framework of the so-called Mexico Initiative. The pact proposed "to standardize" propagandistic journalism, to give a feeling of greater security to the population and to bolster the legitimacy of the government of Felipe Calderón and the entire political class.

That agreement has failed miserably. Today, official data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGi) show that Mexican feel more insecure and less confident than ever about government institutions. 69.5% of people over 18 feel unsafe in their state, four percentage points higher than last year. In the same period, confidence in the Navy fell eight points to reach 47% in the Army, seven points to 46%, and the Federal Police, nearly 10 points, to close at just 17%. These opinions are based on facts, since the same study shows that the number of common law offenses rose by a whopping 90% between 2009 and 2010, 12 to 23 million. Of crimes in 2010, only 12% were reported by victims, and 8% are being investigated by the authorities.

The reality of the political crisis has laid bare the fiction of Mexico Initiative. The fire at the Casino Royale has uncovered a cesspool of corruption and complicity within the PAN political class in Monterrey. Kidnappings and extortion against teachers in Acapulco have shown the total failure of the governments of the PRD regarding its intention to conduct a real political and institutional transition. The explosion of violence and the blatant appropriation of public space by criminals in states like Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Mexico reveal the loss of governability in the main bastions of the old party-state.

Faced with few results from the "Agreement" of the national media, Calderon is now seeking to move the smoke screen to the north. The president's presentation last Thursday in New York on the television program The Royal Tour, where he served as a tour guide, was not a genuine effort to promote investment and travel to our country, but another attempt to "shield" the president's image from the increasingly frequent criticism for his administration. The basic objective is to shore up the eventual candidate of the PAN who will face the presidential elections next year.

But in recent weeks, the effort to control the flow of information has taken a truly macabre twist. Three weeks ago the governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, unjustly imprisoned journalist Jesus Maria Bravo and teacher Gilberto Martinez for forwarding information on social networks that proved false regarding the commission of acts of violence in some primary schools in Veracruz. (My analysis here: http://bit.ly/oVyB37.) While the governor has “pardoned” them for a crime they never committed, he has simultaneously pushed through the state legislature a true legal aberration that penalizes not only the freedom of expression but also fear and social solidarity.

On Tuesday September 20 an amendment to Penal Code of Veracruz was published in the Official Gazette of the state to include the new crime of "disturbing public order". Whoever, "by any means, falsely claims the existence of explosive devices or of assaults with firearms, or toxic chemicals that can cause health damage, thereby causing disruption of public order, shall be liable to imprisonment one to four years and a fine of 500 to a thousand days of minimum wage, taking into account the alarm or disturbance actually produced.”

This amendment violates all international treaties and international standards on freedom of expression as it punishes communication" any means, " without specification, and does not require the existence of" premeditated” or antisocial intent. So today in Veracruz any housewife who warns her neighbor to be careful when going to market because she heard gunshots at the corner, although this has not happened, can be apprehended and sent to jail for four years. In contrast, the real criminals are allowed to place 35 bodies in public, calmly and in broad daylight in the middle of one of the busiest and most touristic areas of the city.
.
This crude and insulting contradiction is the perfect example of the institutional crisis that exists in Mexico today. Our leaders are more concerned with silencing the public and social criticism than stopping the violence and corruption.

Fortunately, there are still some legal avenues to overturn the “Law Duarte”. The national ombudsman, Raul Plascencia, should immediately file a motion of unconstitutionality before the Supreme Court. (Here the application made ​​by two prominent activists: http://bit.ly/p63QO9.) Attorney General Marisela Morales should also do the same. Otherwise, before national and international public opinion, she will prove herself to be a direct accomplice of repression led by Duarte.

An omission in this matter by the Attorney General would also give the green light to the possible adoption of similar reforms in other states and even at the federal level. For example, the Congress of Tabasco is now in the process of preparing a law that would penalize “social alarm” in the Veracruz manner. What is in play here is no more nor less than our very own democratic life. 

Www.johnackerman.blogspot.com

Mexico Drug War: The Zetas' Biggest Rival: Social Networks

InSight Crime: "The Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo has seen three brutal killings in an apparent campaign by the Zetas against social media websites -- what is it about these sites that makes the gang so angry?

... The show of citizens grouping together to defy the criminal groups, prominently displayed on NLV (Nuevo Laredo en Vivio), poses a challenge to the Zetas’ image. Much of the traditional forms of media have been cowed into silence --...  This stands in contrast to the outpouring of tributes to the dead woman, and protests against the Zetas that could be found on the website. Many posters rail against the “ratazzz,” or rats, spelt with a z to represent the Zetas, who are “ruining Nuevo Laredo.” Online forums like NLV represent an arena of defiance that is difficult for the Zetas to control, and this is a challenge to their authority -- one that they are answering with an escalation of brutality."

read more

Mexico Drug War: Newspaper, bloggers stunned by killing in Mexico

MiamiHerald.com: "The killing of a Mexican woman purportedly in retaliation for her postings on an anti-crime website has left stunned chat users and employees at the newspaper where she worked wondering who can still be safe in the violent border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Press freedom groups condemned the killing of Maria Elizabeth Macias, whose decapitated body and head were found Saturday next to a message citing posts she wrote on "Nuevo Laredo en Vivo," a website used by Laredo residents to denounce crime and warn each other about drug cartel gunfights and roadblocks.

Some bloggers vowed to keep up the fight against powerful drug cartels but warned users to trust no one."

read more

Drug War Bloodshed: Decapitated woman mourned by social media website

latimes.com: "A woman found decapitated in the border city of Nuevo Laredo is being mourned as an apparent member of a social networking site used by local residents to share information on drug cartel activity. The victim was found early Saturday with a note nearby saying she was killed for posting messages online about violent or criminal incidents in Nuevo Laredo.

The Tamaulipas state attorney general's office identified the woman as Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro, 39, and said she was an editor at the newspaper Primera Hora (links in Spanish). The Associated Press, however, quoting an employee of the newspaper, identified the victim as Marisol Macias Castaneda, and said she held an administrative and not an editorial post at Primera Hora."

read more

Drug War: Mexico Turns to Twitter and Facebook for Information and Survival

NYTimes.com: "... according to scholars and many Mexicans, social media has become a necessity in Mexico, with a mission far different from what has emerged in the Arab revolutions, or in China. In those countries, social networks have been used to route around identifiable sources of repression and to unify groups dispersed over large areas. In Mexico, Twitter, Facebook and other tools are instead deployed for local survival.

“These aren’t acts of political sedition or real-time attempts to bring about a change in government,” said Nicholas T. Goodbody, a professor of Mexican cultural studies at Williams College. “These are people trying to navigate daily life.”"

read more

Drug War vs. Free Speech: Mexico Twitter Users Speak Out Against Law Pushed by Veracruz Governor

Blog responses to the passage of an anti-Twitter law in the state of Veracruz

Global Voices: The idea that Twitter users would be publicly persecuted sparked even greater outrage when the news broke that the governor was pushing a bill in the State's Congress to punish those who spread rumors on the charge of “disturbing public order”. Twitter users labeled the law #LeyJavierDuarte (”Javier Duarte Law”). Animal Político published the bill's text[es].

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Mexico Human Rights: 'Twitter terrorists' freed in Mexico, charges dropped

latimes.com: "Two people jailed in Mexico's Veracruz state and charged with terrorism because of a series of alarmist tweets were freed Wednesday. Authorities dropped the charges, and the pair walked out of prison to cheering supporters.

"Thank God that freedom of expression won," Maria de Jesus Bravo, a local journalist and radio commentator, said to the crowd (link in Spanish). She and Gilberto Martinez Vera, a math teacher, spent nearly four weeks in jail after they sent out Twitter messages about a supposed attack on a primary school by drug gangs. "

read more

Mexico Human Rights: Freedom likely for Mexico's 'Twitter Terrorists'

latimes.com: "Freedom appears likely for the two people jailed in Mexico's Veracruz state and accused of terrorism for Twitter messages they sent that allegedly sowed panic. ...

Gilberto Martinez Vera (@gilius_22) and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola (@MARUCHIBRAVO) were arrested last month after using the micro-blogging site to spread rumors of an attack by drug gangs on a local primary school. They were charged with terrorism and sabotage, crimes that carry penalties of up to 30 years in jail. Human rights and social media advocates were outraged, saying the punishment hardly fit the offense.

The case snowballed into something of an embarrassment for Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte. On Tuesday, he pushed through a new law that would allow prosecution of rumor-mongers on the lesser charge of disturbing the peace. Many analysts saw this as a face-saving attempt by state authorities to make the case go away.

On Wednesday, Duarte (speaking by, what else? Twitter) said the charges against Martinez, a math teacher, and Bravo, a radio commentator, would be dropped (link in Spanish). Their lawyer, Fidel Ordonez, said he expected the pair to be free by the end of the day."

Mexico Human Rights: Charges For “Twitter Terrorists” To Be Lessened

Mexico: Charges For “Twitter Terrorists” To Be Lessened: " Lawmakers in the Mexican state of Veracruz approved a law Tuesday designed to lessen terrorism and sabotage charges filed against the so-called “Twitter terrorists.” Gilberto Martínez and María de Jesús Bravo allegedly caused a panic last month in the Mexican port city of Veracruz by tweeting rumors of purported drug cartel shootouts.

The new legislation creates a disturbance of the peace charge so prosecutors can revise the indictments against the two. Javier Duarte , the governor of Veracruz, proposed the changes last month after receiving pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and civic groups. He has still not set a date for signing the legislation into law."