Mexican cartels are accessing a database used by the government to monitor their victims in real time: report

ALFREDO ESTRELLA/Getty Images

• Criminals are sharing intelligence and security software through WhatsApp, Vice News said.
• They are using a police database to hunt down their people in real time, according the the report.
• The services are being sold for up to $9,000, the investigation found.

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Mexican cartels are accessing an intelligence and security database used by government agencies to hunt down their victims in real time, sources told Vice News.

The criminals are able to geolocate people through minute-to-minute location logs, and obtain private information and documents through software called Titan, which is being shared on WhatsApp, according to the report.

Various Titan services are available for purchase from 10,000 Mexican pesos ($600) to 180,000 pesos ($9,000), Vice News said. Buyers can either get their own login or get an official user to fulfill requests.

One source said police forces purchase licenses to use Titan, and these are then resold on the black market.

"They sent me a payment method to acquire the licenses and then I re-sell them to whoever wants one," he said. "I know that some law enforcement agencies are also re-selling licenses or services to other cartel members, but that's on them."

Personal information is obtained from a large database and GPS technology is used to track cell phones, according to the investigation.

The Mexican voter ID database, "credit bureaus, bank statements, phone apps logs, emails, amongst many others," also make up the software, a source said.

It is also possible to pay for criminal charges to be deleted from someone's ID on the platform, or have fake ones added on.

A "council" runs the sale of the services, sources told Vice News, which consists of both criminals and Mexican state officials.

One source told Vice News the software is Mexican, but "Israel worked on the backend."

However, it is unclear who exactly is behind Titan, Vice News reported, as it doesn't offer any information on its platform login page, and it keeps changing its servers, presumably to prevent being tracked.

Titan is able to provide a person's address, call log, criminal history, and credit information, just by entering a first and last name or phone number into the database, Vice News found.

"This is the easiest way to locate someone or to know about their relatives if they are hiding," an anonymous member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel told the outlet.

However, sources who spoke with Vice News said they believed the platform was used a lot more by criminals than it was by law enforcement to find missing persons in the country — of which there are around 100,000.

"It is impossible for them to find someone if we don't want him to be found," one source said.

Mexican state governments did not immediately respond to a request by Business Insider for comment.