The Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, appeared this Monday before Parliament at the request of the Broad Front, to give explanations about events related to the case of Alejandro Astesiano, the former personal custodian of Luis Lacalle Pou, who is accused of managing a large network for sale of false passports from Torre Ejecutiva.
Astesiano told some of his clients that he had access to El Guardian software, used for espionage and intelligence, but Heber says it is not possible that this former bodyguard had access to said program.
The minister told the parliamentarians that “it is very common to believe that El Guardian intercepts telephones, but this is not the case, there are no telephone interception systems in El Guardian.” And he added: “Those who intercept are the telephone operators. This should be clear so we don’t get confused. It is worth saying, then, that the one who intervenes on a telephone tomorrow, after the request of a prosecutor with acceptance by court order, is not El Guardian, it is not the Police, but Antel, Movistar, Claro, that is, the telephone operators. The legal area of telecommunications operators that receives the court order from a competent judge performs the corresponding controls —valid signature, valid subscriber number, which belongs to your company— and if there are no objections, executes the legal interception ordered by court order. received,” Heber clarified.
What El Guardian does, he continued, “is to process that information, analyze it, apply intelligence to it, but it does not intercept, that is what the telephone companies do.” As stated in the shorthand version, Heber clarified in commission that it is not the “Police that administer the system.”
He denied that Astesiano agreed
The Secretary of State says that the ex-custodian is lying: There is no possibility that he can enter. Neither I nor the President of the Republic nor anyone who is not duly authorized by the police unit can do it. I want this to be clear. In political discussions – of which there are many and that we can have due to the disagreements that are sometimes generated – we cannot say things that are not true. This is impossible. This is not the merit of our Administration; it comes from before and it is the guarantee of a system that we not only support, but also that we want to continue developing it”, he insisted.
And he added: “Specifically, he was wondering if Mr. Astesiano could have entered the El Guardian system. No he can not. He is not a user ”.
What he did confirm is that the more than 8,500 security cameras that monitor public roads can be accessed both from the Ministry of the Interior and from the Executive Tower of the Presidency of the Republic.
«The possibility of seeing these cameras is held by the Minister of the Interior and the President of the Republic. There is no key to see the cameras, neither in the Prado house nor in the Presidency. These are the cameras that the Uruguayan State puts up to monitor. No one is being watched in particular, rather it is the cameras that we have at established points throughout the country and that are all integrated into the CCU that is in the Republican Guard and that has two referrals: to the Ministry of the Interior in the Casa del Prado and the Presidency of the Republic”, pointed out the minister.
In this line, Heber confirmed that “with the cameras of the Presidency you can access all the cameras in the country.”
