Latin America

  • Below is a timeline including the travels of the President, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and the various US Secretaries of Defense to Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as visits by regional leaders to the United States during Obama’s time in office. It was compiled using resources from the US Department of…

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  • Ecuador has announced a move to shut down the Andean Foundation for the Social Observation and Study of Media, better known as Fundamedios, the country’s main organization dedicated to monitoring threats to freedom of expression. The National Communications Secretariat (Secom) alleges that the group has not complied with a law requiring civil society organizations to…

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  • With perceptions of citizen insecurity on the rise in the world’s most violent region, many Latin American countries have begun calling on their militaries to play a larger role in combating crime and violence. But a recent panel of experts questioned the efficacy of this approach and highlighted numerous potential drawbacks to tasking military forces…

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  • Colombian law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been significantly expanding their ability to intercept electronic communications for more than a decade with help from private firms in the US, Europe, and Israel. According to a new two–part report by the human rights group Privacy International, these companies have helped Colombia construct a “shadow mass surveillance…

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  • While doing some online research, I recently stumbled across the “extranet” of the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM,  the arm of the Defense Department responsible for U.S. military  activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. (An extranet is the part of an organization’s internal computer network accessible to outside users.) The site says it is produced by…

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