After the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) challenged the creation of the National Register of Mobile Telephone Users (Panaut), the Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, admitted the controversy and Therefore, the installation and operation of the Panaut will be stopped until this process is resolved.
According to the minister’s resolution, released on the night of June 14, the IFT’s demand was admitted, in addition to granting the suspension requested by the same autonomous body.
With this determination, it was established that “all the actions that are the responsibility of the IFT to develop the platform” will be paralyzed, as well as the “issuance of general administrative provisions for its operation” and “the campaigns and information media for the dissemination of the Program”.
For his part, Luis Fernando García, director of the Network in Defense of Digital Rights (R3D), pointed out that this suspension also implies that “the IFT will not have administrative responsibility for not issuing the provisions and that it will not start the period for operators to begin to require biometric data for the purchase of new telephony chips ”.
However, it is important to mention that this suspension is not related to the amparos filed by individuals, because it is a different and independent judicial process.
It should be remembered that at the end of May, the IFT challenged various provisions of the Panaut. Among their arguments was the fact that “it does not have the resources to comply with the legislative mandate to launch the Panaut registry out of its budget”, because according to the Institute, they would need more than 700 million pesos for its creation. and operation.
And it is that all of its budgetary resources approved by the Chamber of Deputies for fiscal year 2021, he specified, “are assigned to the functions mandated by the Constitution to this regulatory body.” Even the Institute stressed that the legal system “contravenes its budgetary autonomy”, which is based on carrying out the planning and exercise of the necessary resources in an autonomous, efficient and timely manner.
The IFT is not the only entity that has decided to challenge the creation of the Panaut, since the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) also decided to file a constitutional action against it.
During that discussion, the commissioners agreed that the registry causes effects on the Human Rights of Access to Public Information and Protection of Personal Data, and that the collection of biometric data is not necessary, since the National Population Registry already exists.
In this regard, experts such as the doctor in private law and criminal sciences, Cynthia Solís, have commented that a “opens the door for any authority to request access to information without the mediation of a court order or a formal investigation against a Username”
Among the data that mobile phone users must provide if the Panaut comes into force are name, business name, address, national, CURP and biometric data, which have not yet been specified, a matter that has also generated too much controversy .
Likewise, details are not yet known regarding how the information will be collected, where it will be collected, who will be in charge of protecting it and through what mechanisms, which is extremely important, since if there are not adequate systems, it would be millions of people’s information at risk.
