SudamericaData, the mysterious page they used to investigate the security forces and fell due to illegal espionage on judges

The security forces that were digging into the data of SudamericaData to further criminal investigations they can no longer access. Because? Because the Justice Department ordered it to be deregistered and to prevent consultations by its users in the context of the case for illegal espionage against judges. The former police officer Ariel Zanchetta, designated as an inorganic member of the SIDE and the AFI, he searched in those records for the data of more than two thousand judges, officials, leaders, artists and journalists who became “targets” of his activities, according to the ruling of prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita. week by revealing the dialogues between the imprisoned spy and the deputy director of the AFIP, Fabián “Conu” Rodríguez.

What the opinion stated, however, reveals much more and puts the company SudamericaData itself in the spotlight. It is that, as determined, those responsible for SUDAMERICADATA GROUP SRL “did not respond correctly to the requirements formulated in this case, they hid and altered data in his possession” about the queries made by Zanchetta himself.

But there is another piece of information: the National Directorate of Personal Data Protection of the Agency for Access to Public Information, in whose orbit the National Registry of Databases operates, reported that this signature is not registered. That is to say: Security force agents were looking for information on pages that did not operate under the law.

The suspicion is that this base obtains “data that comes from unknown sources”, the opinion of Gerardo Pollicita, prosecutor of the case for hacking the judges' cell phones and uncovering an illegal espionage network.

When last Monday, Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi ordered a raid on the offices and home of “Conu” Rodríguez to seize his computers and also his cell phone (something that did not materialize because the official was not found and, after a request of detention, he only handed over his phone number to the courts last Friday), he also ordered the search of the SudamericaData offices on Belgrano Street in the San Miguel district.

The order was to close the offices where the server that provides information to its users is located. And obviously also carry out computer closure to unsubscribe all clients while the page was down. But the Gendarmerie agents did not do that. They had to return the next day, with a new letter from the court to comply with the order, they revealed to Infobae the sources consulted. “Something similar happened in that the list of databases from which the firm was drawn up to prepare the reports collected during the procedure was not obtained, but when it was indicated that the source was the server, only a generic list was required. (which was not provided either)”, said a document that he accessed Infobae.

The firm was founded at the end of 2020 by Mario Fernando Aresby profession an engineer and former AFIP official, and Silvia Gladis Duarte, psychopedagogue. The two already appeared in the case, through a representative of the firm. “We are a leading company dedicated to generalized information systems aimed at the location, identification and investigation of each individual,” says the official website.

Although they assure that they draw on public databases, the truth is that the amount of information they offer to their clients is surprising because of the level of details about the privacy of the searched persons: private cell phone number, private email, exact amount of salary income, 'personal assets' of the 'targets' (including real estate in their name) or data apparently coming from AFIP, to name a few examples.

It was in SudamericaData where Zanchetta looked for the data of the Cassation judge Mariano Borinsky, the same day he was hacked last year. On that basis, as he revealed Infobae Last June, it was found that he made 2,157 searches between January 3 and December 31, 2022. That number of queries does not imply that he searched for data on 2,157 people because there are many searches that are repeated. Justice has in its possession the details of the day and time in which Ariel Zanchetta, the former sergeant of the Federal Police turned journalist, consulted the names. In addition, the CUIT of each of the people whose data the current defendant searched for appears.

When, following this information and with Zanchetta already detained, Justice asked the company for more details about this user, a series of circumstances drew attention. The company reported that Ariel Pedro Zanchettaa registers the user “arjunin” and that since its supposed creation in 2021 to date it has registered the following number of queries: 1,487 during 2021, 2,157 during 2022 and 260 during 2023, according to the response made on September 20. However, from the messages, documents and photographs on Zanchetta's cell phone, the user "arjunin" was active since November 2009 - and not since 2021, as the company reported -.

Investigators not only want to know all the real searches for Zanchetta, but also if there were more users of that service who had links to the former police officer. Also the scope, permissions and credentials of the user “arjunín”.

For Pollicita, Zanchetta “obtained information from data banks with restricted access from public organizations — such as the National Directorate of Migration and the National Directorate of Automotive Property Registries — for which he had users and access codes.” But he also illegitimately accessed two databases whose origin is unknown because the National Database Registry reported that it did not know of their existence.

One is called the “National Background Base”, with which Zanchetta had access to information about people's backgrounds, personal data, nicknames, employment and criminal records, criminal modalities, family ties or Interpol arrest warrants. The other is called the “National Mobile Telephone Base” through which it accessed information regarding the registration data, address and ownership of the cell lines of each of the “targets.”

The former police officer used numerous open or public information databases and fee-based databases that gather information about individuals: SudamericaData, Nosis, Veraz, Riesgo Online, ReportesOnline, Busquedatos, Riesgonet, Agildataonline, CuadroDeSituación, Pyp.datos . “All of this allowed it to gather and store information on thousands of people only for the period 2016-2023, it involved carrying out at least more than twelve thousand queries to restricted access databases, private databases and databases. illegal," said the Public Ministry.

According to what the prosecution has proven, Zanchetta made at least 12,063 queries in databases in that period: 371 in Riesgonet, 831 in Veraz, 7011 in Nosis and 3904 in SudamericaData, although - according to the opinion - that last number is smaller than the number real of your searches.