Colombia’s unprecedented police purge causes controversy
Gustavo Petro
Francia Marquez
Colombia suspends ‘most important project of this century’
How to end the war in western Colombia?
Colombia’s government talks peace with ELN in Cuba
Colombia and Venezuela reestablish diplomatic ties
How to keep Venezuela’s diaspora in Colombia safe?
Colombia’s new government proposes tax reform to finance...
Peace talks with Colombia’s ELN guerrillas ‘about to...
  • About
  • Support
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
Colombia News | Colombia Reports
  • News
    • General
    • Analysis
    • War and peace
    • Elections
    • Economy
    • Culture
    • Sports
    • Science and Tech
  • Travel
    • General
    • Bogota
    • Medellin
    • Cali
    • Cartagena
    • Antioquia
    • Caribbean
    • Pacific
    • Coffee region
    • Amazon
    • Southwest Colombia
    • Northeast Colombia
    • Central Colombia
  • Data
    • Economy
    • Crime and security
    • War and peace
    • Development
    • Cities
    • Regions
    • Provinces
  • Profiles
    • Organized crime
    • Politics
    • Armed conflict
    • Economy
    • Sports
  • Lite
  • Opinion
News

Device to protect Colombia’s threatened activists and journalists can be used against them: AP

by Adriaan Alsema March 28, 2017

An electronic device given to some 400 threatened journalists and human rights defenders can be easily manipulated to record and even locate the protected persons, reported The Associated Press Monday.

The GOS-enabled device with a “panic button” is meant to allow a person in imminent threat to alert the authorities, who can then see where the threatened person is located.

According to AP, however, technical flaws would make it easy for hostile parties to hack the machines, disable them, use them to record and send audio and even find out a target’s whereabouts.

The news agency and security firm Rapid7 found no evidence the flaws have been exploited, but security experts are alarmed as AP’s exercise can be replicated, compromising the lives of hundreds.

Eva Galperin of cybersecurity NGO Electronic Frontier Foundation told AP “this is negligence to the extreme,” calling the found flaws “a tremendous security failure.”

According to AP, the Chinese device distributed among those under state protection was originally meant to locate lost pets or children.

According to the National Protection Unit (UNP), which issued the device, AP’s findings are “overblown.”

“It’s a very, very basic protection measure for people whose risks aren’t very complex,” UNP director Diego Mora told the news agency.

However, according to those needing protection, the flawed device only adds to already inadequate protection measures like body armor.

“What am I going to do with body armor riding the bus?” Amalfi Rosales, a journalist who was forced to flee the northern La Guajira province after exposing corruption, told AP.

Another journalist, Claudia Julieta Duque, reported in August last year that the devices have a built-in microphone they hadn’t been told about by the UNP.

Distrusting the state, whose intelligence agencies and security forces are implicated in numerous assassinations, many have since stopped using the device, according to AP.

In the case of Duque, five former officials of now-defunct intelligence agency DAS are on trial for psychological torture of the journalist after she exposed state involvement in the killing of Jaime Garzon, one of Colombia’s most famous journalists and comedians, who was killed in 1999.

“In many cases, the government is the adversary,” said Tanya o’Carroll of human rights NGO Amnesty International.

Mora rejected any suggestion that his office, which offers protective services to some 6,500 people, distributed panic buttons with the intent of spying on activists.

National Protection Unit

Trending

  • Colombia suspends ‘most important project of this century’

  • Colombia’s new government proposes tax reform to finance ambitious agenda

  • Colombia’s largest paramilitary group announces unilateral ceasefire

Related articles

  • Colombia orders FARC leaders’ bodyguards to return firearms amid growing security concerns

  • FARC leader ‘Jesus Santrich’ not seen since Saturday: authorities

  • Colombia’s Duque proposes hard-right pundit to protect threatened leaders

  • RSS

@2008-2019 - Colombia Reports. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by Digitale Zaken and Parrolabs


Back To Top