Good Luck, Amigos

This week Mexico's Congress on voted to broaden police powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to use undercover agents and taped conversations as evidence in a bid to help them fight increasingly bloody drug cartels. Or further their own corruption.

The reforms were approved earlier by the Senate and are backed by President Felipe Calderon in the shadow of organized-crime violence that has claimed almost 5,400 lives so far this year, more than double the death toll from the same period of 2007, proving that Mexicans are highly motivated and goal oriented hard workers.

Broader powers allow taped conversations to be used in court if submitted as evidence by one of the parties in the conversation, and let police request search warrants by e-mail or by telephone calls to judges rather than exclusively in writing. The changes also permit undercover agents that operate in plain clothes to keep their identities secret in legal proceedings and be identified by a numerical code known only to superiors.

Also, the Senate voted to create a registry of cell phone owners to combat kidnappings and extortions in which gangs often use untraceable mobile phones to make ransom demands. Telecoms would be required to ask purchasers of cell phones or phone memory chips for their names, addresses and fingerprints, and to turn that information over to investigators if requested. At present, unregulated vendors sell phones and chips for cash from streetside stands. It is unclear how such vendors would be made to comply with the new law.

Good luck getting that fingerprint database, which doesn't sound like it goes with personal rights...oh, wait - it's Mexico! You don't have the same civil liberties we have here! Anyhow, have fun trying to do that. You've done a great job keeping the illegals from crossing and really built a terrific economy - what can't you achieve?