The Federal Police (PF) seized US$ 171,800 thousand dollars (equivalent to around R$ 870 thousand reais at the current exchange rate) during the operation this Friday (20) against servers of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) suspected of illegal use of a spy system.
Opponents of President Bolsonaro and journalists would be among those targeted by illegal monitoring, according to the investigation.
The amount was seized at the targets’ addresses and will be examined. The PF investigates the origin of the money to find out if it is related to the investigation.
Two Abin employees were arrested and five were removed during a Federal Police operation carried out this Friday. The group used a geolocation system to monitor location and telephone calls.
Police officers, lawyers, judges and members of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) would also have been spied on.
The spy program in question is FirstMile. The Israeli tool would have been used irregularly between December 2018 and 2021. But with more intensity this last year, just before the pre-election campaign.
In a note, Abin states “contract 567/2018, of a confidential nature, began on December 26, 2018 and ended on May 8, 2021.” The director of Abin during this period was Alexandre Ramagem, now a deputy in the same party as former president Bolsonaro, PL.
The Brazilian Intelligence Agency is the body responsible for producing content that is passed on to the President of the Republic to assist in decision-making.
Alerts, threats and bulletins are produced and sent directly.
The irregular use of the spy program was revealed in March by the newspaper O Globo, which led to the opening of an investigation at the PF Intelligence Directorate.
spy program
Around 10,000 cell phone owners per year may have been monitored without judicial authorization, according to the Federal Police.
The Israeli tool requested that the contact number be entered and, from there, the last location of the device owner could be tracked on a map, with 2G, 3G and 4G networks.
The program allowed someone’s whereabouts to be tracked with data that was transferred from the cell phone to telecommunications towers installed in different regions. With this information, it was possible to view the travel history and create “real-time alerts” of movements at different addresses.
According to the investigations, the two Abin employees — who maintained their positions until today — even used their knowledge about misuse as a means of coercion to avoid dismissal in an administrative disciplinary process.
When contacted, Abin has not yet commented on the operation. A CNN He also sought out the former director of Abin and Alexandre Ramagem and the defense of former president Bolsonaro, but has not yet heard back.
See also: Federal Police execute warrants against neo-Nazi group
Source: CNN Brasil
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