Mexicans Resist Registering Identiy with Phone Numbers (Derrick Broze on Redacted)

All right, well, a privacy win for the people. This story is in Mexico, but it does show that it works to rise up and dissent against government surveillance. So listen up. Maybe we can learn something about collective dissent. So the government there was set to force citizens to register their mobile phone lines with their identification. And people were quite rightly worried about how the government would store this data and use it to track their phones. The controversy received so much pushback and resistance from the Mexican population that the government had backed down and delayed this requirement. Journalist Derek Brose lives in Mexico. He's been reporting on this and he joins us to tell the story. So, Derek, tell us a little bit more about what the worry was about this requirement and how there was a success in actually pushing back against the technocracy.

Yeah, thank you, Natalie, for giving this story some light. I think it is an important story in terms of how we can successfully push back. So last summer, in 2025, the Mexican government, they passed a controversial package of law. There's a few of them that are related to biometrics and to the technocracy, as you say. The main ones of concern relate to telecommunications. They made a change in the telecommunications law where they said that in the coming years, individuals in Mexico who want to have phone or Internet service, cell phone, Internet service, will have to register their biometrics, meaning their face print, their fingerprints, in order to continue that service. That mandate has not come into play yet. But that is one of their plans. But the one that they gave a deadline almost immediate, was that individuals in Mexico who currently don't have a contract, who are on a prepaid month to month plan, they would be forced to show their identity. You know, and Mexico is one of the nations in the world, I think, the United States and a few others, where you don't have to show identity. If you can just walk into your local store, corner store or retailer and buy a SIM card anonymously, without id, without any sort of, you know, showing anything at all. So you can buy that, you can put it in your phone. Now, of course, if you're on a contract, you tend to show ID in that process. So that's separate. But in Mexico particularly, some estimates say that 80% of the country is on prepaid month to month plans for various reasons. And so this would be a big change by requiring people to show their identity. The Mexican government says this is necessary because they're trying to stop extortion and kidnappings by the cartel, which does happen, and surely they use anonymous phones to do it. But their Answer instead is to force the rest of the population to register, even though we know the cartel isn't going to register. And so this was their main reason. They say it'll cut down on extortion, it'll cut down on fraud, and it is a requirement. And yet they did set the deadline for actually tomorrow, so that the deadline was supposed to go into effect tomorrow, July 1st. But on Thursday of last week, after it becoming very clear that this was not going to happen. I mean, for months, the reporting has said 10% of the country had registered. Then it was 20%. I saw one report a couple of weeks ago that said 31%. And the Mexican government president, Claudia Sheinbaum, last Thursday when she gave a press conference. And when they released this information, they're claiming that it's up to about 50% of the country. I don't trust the government's numbers, but let's just, you know, give them the benefit of the doubt. Somewhere between 50% to 10% of the country only registered, and the other half chose not to participate. And so when it was becoming clear that the deadline was approaching and people were not going to be ready, that basically the telecommunications companies would be forced to cut off 50 plus million people's phone lines if they kept this deadline, the Mexican government, they basically blinked and they said that, that the deadline does not go into effect tomorrow. And they came up with a new plan that they announced last week, which honestly, I think is going to make things even more confusing. But for me, this is important to highlight because not only is this the third time in a decade the Mexican government has tried to do this, they passed other laws that have previously been overturned by the courts, and they've tried to do similar things, and the people haven't rolled over and just complied. But to show that, as you said earlier, we can actually slow these things down now, of course, this law is still on the books. We'll see what the future holds. But at the moment, it showed that 50 plus millions of Mexicans and probably as high as 100 million, did not register and chose not to register. And it's not just that they were ignorant or lazy or anything of that sort. When you read the Mexican media and you see some of the interviews and you talk to the Mexican people, as I do living here, they don't trust the government. They don't trust that their data is going to be safe in the hands of the government or in the hands of the telecommunications companies because they're worried about cartel corruption. Even some people who did choose to register, said they're getting more fraud calls, more extortion calls sent.

Oh, great.

And even just in the last year since they announced this, announced this law, there have been two major breaches of Mexican databases, including health care records that leaked all over the Internet. And so people are pointing to those sorts of things and saying, you know, you want us to give us, give us your data, but you can't even protect what you already have. So for the moment, it is a delay. There's now like a staggered schedule they have. They're claiming that depending on what your last number of your phone number is, if you have zero, you have to August 15th, if your last number is one, you have to August 31st. And they staggered it like that to the end of the year, which, as I said, I think that's just going to be even more chaos. But maybe they think by isolating certain groups, they can push certain people to comply. But I just don't think it's going to go over. And then just one other thing that I think we've talked about in the past when speaking about Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum also claimed that by the end of this year, the Mexican government is going to stop accepting cash at gas stations and at toll booths for Mexico's nationwide toll system. And yeah, so she's claiming that in the next six months, which is just, again, it's insane that she actually believes this is gonna happen. Just like we saw, they couldn't force this phone registration in six months. The idea that 150 plus Mexicans are about to just stop using cash, where the majority of the country uses cash, and that they're just gonna stop accepting that the gas stations and the tolls is just ridiculous. But that's another claim and it is an example of how Mexico, like all nations around the world, are trying to push towards that digital ID track and trace society in different ways. But Mexico is unlike the US and UK in terms of politics. Just because the government passes a law or says something or makes a procl, it doesn't mean that it's going to play out that way in real life. And the Mexican people often will drag their feet out of mistrust or just outright say we're not going to comply. And all across Mexican Twitter and elsewhere, I've been seeing the responses and people are not happy about these programs. I don't think the Mexican government's going to get their way. That doesn't mean they won't try other methods. But for the moment, this is a victory that I Think we should be celebrating.

Right. And so it wasn't like marching in the street. It was just, I will not comply. It's as simple as that. Like, you go ahead and say you're. You're going to do that. I'm not going to do that. That's amazing that it was just. It was, it was, yeah, what we call it, like silent quitting. Like, no, we're not doing that.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's. It's just. Even for me, as when this happened last summer, you know, I'm not born in Mexico. I've been living here for six years. But when it happened last summer, I immediately was like, oh, God, we got to step into action. I started. We started printing out flyers in Spanish about the biometric stuff, about the phone registration and going to local markets and just talking to people. And I noticed that there wasn't a lot of awareness. And that's when it became clear to me, it's like, okay, the government just passed the law, but as I said, most people don't pay attention. And then once they announced that the deadline was supposed to be for July 1st, this was just six months ago. And again, I was just like, wow, there's no way this is going to happen. Most of the people I talk to don't even know this is a law, that it's supposed to be a thing. And I would try to go buy a SIM card at the corner store, and I asked them, do I need to show biometrics or hid? They're just like, I don't know what you're talking about. Just, here's the. Give me the money and you can have the card. Like, there was no even sign that this was taking place. The only sign that there was, which I think at this point was just a fear campaign, was the people who are on, like, say, contract or the people who are on prepaid, they were starting to get in the last two months, text. Text messages from their phone carriers reminding them of this deadline. You saw a few ads online saying, if you don't get your phone registered by this date, you're not going to have any service. You're only going to have access to emergency calls. So they were sort of starting to push it. But, you know, from. From the simple reasons, like people said it was confusing, some people didn't understand to the reasons of people saying, heck, no, we're not going to do this. We don't trust the government. We're not going to give over our data. And I think to those who are really speaking our language. I definitely saw Mexicans commenting online saying this is a part of Agenda 2030. This is a part of digital identity. Like people who really, really get why it's a concern. So you kind of have that range of reasons. Like you said, some people just kind of quiet quitting, like whatever, I'm not going to participate. They don't need to go to the streets. They just, I'm not, I'm not going to comply. I don't care what you say to others who just didn't understand it and who, and some who tried but found the system confusing. And then as I said earlier, people who actually did eventually comply but found, wow, now that I did it, I feel like I'm getting more scam calls and things like that. And so you just have this broad range of mistrust of the government, which personally I find very encouraging.

Sure. Well, especially when you see that the official reason is we need this to combat organized crime, drug trafficking, searching for missing people. It's like, why start now? You're not, you're not actually making any progress in doing that. You know, we don't see major efforts. The cartel is embedded inside the government, so why would you just want to like give it to the middleman? You know, like how many people really think there that the government is trying to fight organized crime?

There's been a couple of times where I've been posting about this over the last couple months and once, and once or twice I've seen somebody comment in Spanish that seem to believe the official story. They may have been a bot, I don't know. But I got a couple of comments. I will say that people saying no, this is going to be to help them catch criminal activity. And my response to that is not to be dismissive, but if you really trust that the Mexican government is all of a sudden, as you said, Natalie, trying to just take care of this when there's been scandal after scandal just showing the connection between cover ups of different kidnappings. I mean, there's so many famous stories over the last decade of missing students and teachers and horrible atrocities and houses that have been discovered where there was clearly bodies being stored and governors and mayors covered it up. I mean, these are unfortunately not uncommon in Mexican politics. So when you hear those kinds of things and people know those kinds of things, the idea that all of a sudden the government is just stepping up and ready to do something about it is a bit silly. But I guess there's some people out there who believe the story. Nevertheless, for the moment it's not happening. And I will be following this, that I've been reporting on [email protected] for the last year as it, as it happened. And I will continue to follow it because like I said, it's July tomorrow. So they've got about a month and a half before the new deadline starts. And we'll see if they even enforce that first deadline. And if they don't, then I think it's going to become quite clear that this is just not going to happen. Like if they can't even isolate people, let's say the zeros, the people with number enduring 0 is 2 million people or something like that, that's still quite a bit of people to just cut off if they don't comply. But if the numbers are any indication, like I said, the pol that I saw somewhere between 10 to 30%, then I still don't think even doing it in this staggered way is going to get the result that they want.

Right. So the problem is that they were, they couldn't be called on their bluff. Whereas in the United States, when there's a requirement like this, we try and push back, but then the government has the power to enforce these things. I think about how the federal government has recently said, you can't pay your taxes anymore by check. You have to have. That was the Trump administration that did that. You have to have bank transfer. And I did not want the government to have my banking data, but I have no choice anymore. And so is there a lesson here for us to just not comply? I just don't know what, you know, what can we learn from this?

Well, I think, well, first off, your question, I think is a legitimate question because obviously Mexico in the United States or the UK or Australia or Canada, where some of the audience is going to be listening from, these are not identical situations. These are not identical governments in a lot of ways. And so I recognize that. And a big part of that is what we were just speaking about here is that even if a bunch of Americans don't trust the government, by and large people still follow what the government says because the government is strong enough to have enforcement mechanisms to actually, you know, follow through with its words. Whereas in a place like Mexico where the government is weaker and there is just a historic, you know, going back 100 years plus years, I would say mistrust of the government, it's a little bit different because, yeah, you can see these kind of situations where the government says, here's a law, do it or we're going to punish you. And then if people don't do it, they, oops, never mind, we'll take that one back. That doesn't really happen that often in the US And Canada especially not without massive pushback. Maybe it could happen if there was such, you know, mass marching in the streets and just straight, straight up non compliance. The other lesson that I would say that I take away from this, this is kind of one of the reasons why I'm in Mexico. Besides, you know, loving the land and the culture and everything like that. I think the fact that there is a weaker federal government and that is sort of behind in terms of technology in a lot of ways. Obviously in the big cities, it's just as modern and technologically advanced as any big city in the US But a lot of the country is very rural and there are, there are ways that the governments are sort of behind and don't have the enforcement mechanisms and don't have trust in the people in order to actually follow through with their threats. I think that's a positive thing. So whether in Mexico or in other nations, if you're in that sort of situation, it presents that opportunity to just stand strong with each other. You know, if everybody, for example, if everybody had, out of fear said, oh my God, they're going to cut off my phone line on July 1, I'm going to comply right away out of fear. And surely some people did that. Unfortunately, there are a lot of foreigners who moved to Mexico and by my estimates and research, it seems like they're probably one of the higher groups that comply. Where Mexicans don't comply, you end up with these, you know, American, Canadian immigrants who live here who comply immediately. But if people had just given in

and done that, I mean, you can't really blame a Canadian, you know, their government will take their bank account for not complying. So let's not, you know, they don't know.

Yeah, they want to come to Mexico and just kind of immediately comply with, with the law. And like, you know, I had a, one of these gentlemen say, I'm completely up to date with all my records and I've registered this. I don't understand what the big deal is surveillance. But my point with just saying that is that the Mexican people and those who are here, whether foreigners like myself or otherwise, if we stand together and people in other nations do the same thing, you can actually build that strength together and you can push back, you can resist. Because again, if you had just complied, if everybody had just complied out of the fear the fear was strong enough because as we know, fear is a great motivator. And this is one of the ways that the technocrats are going to push technocracy, fear, convenience, and entertainment. In this case, it was fear. It was like, you know, get, get. You're going to get cut off. But it was also telling them, we promise we're going to go after kidnapping victims. And if everybody had fallen for that, then we would be talking today about how this program succeeded and how Mexico has forced people who historically don't have to show identity to now connect their ID to their. Their phones. But thankfully, because people, whether for ideological reasons or just because they're lazy or they're just dragging their feet, they did not comply. And it sent a message. And the Mexican government realized, like, all right, if we cut off 100, you know, up to 100 million people's phone numbers, especially in the middle of the World cup in Mexico, you might end up with some riots, you might end up with, you know, some. Some dangerous situations. And so they decided to back off. And I think that's the big lesson is find ways to come together, find ways to drag your feet, to push back. And of course, you know, as I talked about on your show, I believe opting out is. Is a big part of the answer to start to think about the ways that you might be dependent on these different systems. And if you don't have a backup plan or, you know, anything sort of that you're thinking of thinking about as an alternative, when push comes to shove, you might be forced to comply with things you don't want to because you haven't taken time to either resist p or have an alternative plan. So that's where I put a lot of my energy into, as you know, when I talk about exit and build. So for me, this is just another reminder of, like, all right, how can we build lives as much as we use the phones and they're so useful in so many ways, how do we build lives that if when push comes to shove and they say you can't use the phone without, you know, verifying yourself on the Internet, like the last, last story or with the digital id that we can say, you know what? I don't need it anymore, I'm going to go ahead and just live my life free of that rather than complying? And I think that's a conversation we should probably be thinking about.

Yeah. All right, well, Derek Brose, you can follow him on X. And again, the last American vagabond is his reporting. So thank you for bringing this story to our attention. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you, Natalie. I appreciate you.

Okay, well, let us know what you think of that. Can you just opt out? You just, you know, take some inspiration from the Mexican people. I'm not gonna do that. I love the spirit of that. So let us know what you think.