> A little-known technology firm that has quietly grown into a surveillance powerhouse in Latin America. Over the past three decades, Grupo Seguritech has evolved from a small company selling home alarms into a sprawling network of firms that are deeply involved in projects across the region.

Virtually all the technology used by this Mexican company, Grupo Seguritech, is imported from other countries. As a university student, I completed a Master's thesis about export manufacturing industries in Mexico. Then as now, the vast majority of manufacturing exports were (and still are) produced by foreign capital. Today Mexican capital contributes relatively little to the total value of manufactured exports. This is an important consideration: even in Mexican firms like Grupo Seguritech that are operating in other countries, such firms are not really in control of this technology, they are only licensing it from abroad. Foreign capital owns and controls the tech, and foreign capital reaps a substantial share of the profits.