| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2008 
Mexican Lawmakers Adopt Bill to Cut Mobile Phone Use in Crimes
 Adriana Lopez Caraveo & Jens Erik Gould - Bloomberg
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 |  | The population is defenseless against the improper use of cellular phones because a real and trustworthy database of users doesn’t exist.
- Gustavo Cardenas |  | | |
Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved a bill creating a national database of mobile phone users’ personal information in an effort to reduce the use of phones in extortion and kidnapping crimes.
The initiative, approved late yesterday, modifies the telecommunications law so that mobile phone companies must ask customers for identification, proof of residence and fingerprints. The Senate passed the bill in September, and will now need to approve changes made by the lower house.
Kidnappers and extortionists use mobile phones in about 95 percent of the crimes they commit, according to the initiative published in the Senate Gazette in September. Under the bill, companies would submit personal information to a national database that authorities could use to track telephone calls and locate criminals.
“The population is defenseless against the improper use of cellular phones because a real and trustworthy database of users doesn’t exist,” said Gustavo Cardenas, head of the communications committee in the lower house.
Deaths related to organized crime and drug trafficking in 2008 reached 5,000 this week, a record tally almost twice as high as last year’s figure. President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers to drug cartel strongholds across the country and is carrying out a plan to clean up police forces accused of corruption.
Carlos Slim’s America Movil SAB controls three-quarters of the Mexican mobile-phone market. Competitors include Grupo Iusacell SA and Spain’s Telefonica SA.
To contact the reporters on this story: Adriana Lopez Caraveo in Mexico City at adrianalopez(at)bloomberg.net; Jens Erik Gould in Mexico City at jgould9(at)bloomberg.net |
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