Will Mexico Cut the Phone Lines of Millions of People Next Week?

And this brings me to my final story of the night. Now, you guys, if you've been following me since last summer, you know that I've been reporting on Mexico's evolving situation where last summer there were some bills passed. There was several bills, telecommunications bills, claiming that on July 1, 2026, all Mexicans, people with phones within the company, the country, are going to have to have their phone lines registered with their carp. And the CURP in Mexico is like a Social Security number card. It's been around since 1996, and it is a set of numbers. It also now in recent years has become biometric. So when people sign up for the curp, or let's say you're a foreigner and you want to get residency, temporary or permanent, they take your fingerprints, they do a face scan, and that is registered with your, you know, your different documents. And, and, and so the curb is part of that. And this bill that passed in Mexico in 2026 or 2025 claimed that they were trying to put an end to kidnappings, to extortion, where the cartel and other criminals will kidnap people using anonymous cell phones. Because you can just walk into, prior to this law, you can just walk into any local gas station, you can buy a SIM card. You don't have to show your id, you don't have to put a name to it, just put that in a phone and you've got an anonymous sim. And so people were using this to commit crimes, surely. And that's what they claim. And they say to stop this, we're going to force hundreds of millions of people to scan their faces and connect their face and their biometrics to their phone line. And everybody who has a phone has to have that connected. Now, of course, we know criminals aren't going to register, so it's not really going to address that problem. And it's, it just ends up becoming a way to target the focus on the population, the domestic population. So I've been following this since last year and kind of reporting on all the different developments. And, and here we are now, June 22nd. We are, I think, eight days away from this. It starts on July 1st. So, yeah, that would be next Wednesday, July 1st, allegedly. But as I've also been reporting, the numbers have been less than what the government might have hoped for and what the corporations might have hoped for. And so I've seen reports as low as saying that only 10% of the country has signed up, others saying 20. I think the most, the highest I've seen is 31. And now more recently they're claiming, they're claiming up to 50% and I'm just showing you to. There's some reports going back months. This is in February. Kurt, Biometrica more control. Then we have this one. This is coming out just today. Excuse me, Last May says Mexicans say no to registration. The countdown continues. Out of the 158 million active cell phone lines, all only 49.5 have been registered with the CURP. That is just 31%. One month before the deadline expires, millions of Mexicans refuse to hand over their personal data. And this is a report by this journalist, Carmen and she goes and Carmen Sanchez and she goes and interviews Mexicans in Mexico City. You can find that one there. Again all these are in the show notes now this is just today, June 22nd countdown to registration. Days before the deadline to link phone lines with Kirp. I less than 50% has complied. Distrust over the use of personal data. Stalling the process despite efforts to combat crimes like extortion. You got another report there. Then we got this one here. These are all, most of these, the majority of these are all brand new that I'm opening up here and sharing with you and I will have a brand new investigation collecting all this information. Written article for the last American Vagabond coming later this week. So you can stay tuned to that. But what I'm showing you guys right now is just kind of a little bit of preview of what I'm going to write about and, and how eight days before the deadline, the news is still reporting that people are saying no, they're going and they're interviewing people in the streets and the people are saying I'm not going to comply with this. Millions of phone lines at risk. Eight days before the deadline to register phone lines in Mexico, more than half the users still haven't completed the process. Jose Flores, spokesperson for the Network and Defense of Digital Rights, also known as Red, tells us all about it. And so they do an interview with Jose Flores here and, and they're basically just saying the same thing. People don't want to complete, don't want to comply and they're not going to play the game. You got another report here. This is coming four hours ago. No extension for cell phone registration. Officials warn of millions of numbers being cut off. So they're claiming they're not going to, they're not going to stop it. Despite some people wondering if it is going to happen or not, if it is going to stop. But you can see this, these reports are coming all over obligation, obligatory registration of cell phones and curb and you know, so it's coming up, it's coming up very quickly and people are not going to register. Look, we got some comments here. No al registro, no to registration. We are firm and not registering. We're 100 million. They should put signal blockers in the prisons and do the reviews of the telephone registry and biometric Kirk, because that's the thing people are saying, well, the prisoners have phones as well and they're using them in prisons to commit crimes. They clearly could stop that if they wanted to. You have another journalist here, Irene Levy. She says in her new report, she says there will be an extension and the mobile lines registry. My column for today is her new column for El Univers Universal. And this is her article here. I did find it and here it is right here. And we can translate it real quick. Says again there will be registration for the mobile font. There will be an extension for the registration of mobile lines. And she says here the deadline of June 30th is one week away and there will be an extension. The president herself let, let it glimpse in the morning of June 18. She said that next Thursday they will report that they will wait to see how the record progresses. And above all, we don't want to affect the people. Not half of the, the 144 million lines have been recorded. So basically they're saying that like she's saying they're not going to disconnect all these lines in the middle of the World Cup. You know, soccer is huge in Mexico. They're not going to disconnect hundreds of, you know, 50 plus million people from the phone lines. And she's saying this based on a video interview that Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, did last week where she apparently made that reference and said we don't want to affect people, we're not trying to harm them. You can see this is the, this is from her week or daily press conference mast de lin telefonicos. So they're basically, you know, asking her about the phone line. Over half the phone lines registered with 12 days until deadline and she gets asked and says she doesn't want to harm people. So we'll see. Guys, I mean this is coming up. I'm like I said, I'm going to have a brand new report on this. I don't know will they really cut the phone lines? We're about to find out. But I want to make it clear that even if you're not in Mexico or somebody's like, oh well, Mexico is not my country. That's not where I live when it's not where I'm from. Whatever. What's happening in Mexico is an example of what could happen in other places. If people don't comply, I don't think it's going to go through. I think they are going to back down and it might be at the last minute they decide, you know, okay, we're going to do an extension. As this lady is saying, they're going to do an extension for 120 days. We'll see if that happens. This is the third time Mexico has tried this over the last 10 years and it keeps failing because people don't want to comply. Not only that, because Mexico doesn't really have the infrastructure to do it. That doesn't mean they won't keep trying. But two things to take away. For one, if you are part of those people out there who have been hearing about this story and I've had so many people send me articles related to the biometric curtain, like Derek, Mexico has digital ID or did you know Mexico's digital id or like, oh, I thought Mexico was more freedom minded or just whatever. And people conflate this biometric program which is not good as being a digital id. It's not a digital ID even if it does go through. Like you don't have to carry a digital ID to go around Mexico to buy anything, to get on a bus line to do any of that kind of stuff. Now the curb, if you're going to be in the system, the curb is needed for paying for certain things. But if you're like me and I am here in Mexico as a guest, as a tourist, I don't get the residency, I don't get the temporary or permanent residency. I'm not interested in becoming a citizen. So some people do that route but if you do that, you're going to be forced to comply with the biometrics. So I don't want to do that as long as I don't have to. And I'm just, you know, I'm playing my own path. But it is not a digital ID and so many people on social media who don't know about Mexico, we're just reporting Mexico's got a digital id, Mexico biometrics. And the whole time I've been saying just wait and see. Mexico's not like other countries. Mexico, Mexicans don't necessarily just blindly comply, although a lot of people did during COVID just like everywhere else in the world. And so you can't just assume because a law is passed that the government says something that it's actually going to play out that way. In reality, that's not really how Mexico always works. People often just kind of do their own thing and and they don't care or pay attention to what the government says. Now, a lot of people will follow what the government says, of course, but not everybody. So just want to make that clear. And then the other thing is, take this as a lesson that if the people don't comply, you can stop bad policies. At least you can slow them down. Who knows if it'll last forever, but you can slow them down. So I hope you guys take note of that whenever you see these kinds of policies rolling out in your own countries, wherever you're at, including all my friends in the United states, guys.

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