Federal police and a special cyber unit freed a 31-year-old software engineer from a locked data shed on the outskirts of San Isidro on 21 September, and what they found inside has stunned Buenos Aires’s tech and political circles. Investigators say AndesBridge Systems — a privately held firm that provided municipal ‘‘smart’’ sensors and app updates across Argentina — was running clandestine audio and location feeds that were relayed in near‑real time to a foreign state security directorate.
Prosecutors say the case began when the engineer, identified in court papers as Iľja M. Abrahám, called a friend while being held at the site and described servers, an armoured van and a cache of standard consumer phones configured to stream microphone and GPS data. The seizure that followed, they say, provides the first direct evidence that a domestic tech company sold continuous surveillance access on ordinary devices without users’ knowledge.
The rescue that cracked the case
Iľja M. Abrahám, who worked as a systems integrator for AndesBridge until this summer, told The Plausible Post he was detained after refusing to help build the concealed feeds. “They told me the code was for ‘diplomatic clients’ — but it was set to listen to people in Buenos Aires, Rosario and small towns,” he said. “I managed to send one short message and two hours later the unit came.”
They converted everyday apps into live microphones for a foreign security service.
Molija Vācietis‑Niedra, cybersecurity researcher
Evidence, servers and payments
At the shed officials catalogued 82 conventional smartphones modified with covert firmware, 12 server racks configured for continuous relay, stacks of prepaid SIM cards and a hard drive labelled with encrypted tags that investigators say map to diplomatic schedules. Forensic technicians at the federal cyber office report that the phones carried code enabling the device microphone and GPS to transmit silently when the handset appeared within a list of geofenced coordinates.
Molija Vācietis‑Niedra, a security researcher at Buenos Aires Technical Institute who reviewed decrypted logs provided by prosecutors, said the traffic patterns match direct, scheduled pushes to an IP block registered to a state security agency abroad. “This is organised, contract‑level work — not the hobbyist spying we usually see,” she said. Federal prosecutor Valentino Manzanares‑Vega confirmed that bank records show ARS 1.1 billion (about $2.8m) in transfers to shell companies linked to AndesBridge between 2023 and 2025 and that a criminal inquiry will examine whether the firm broke national wiretapping and export‑control laws.
Politicians and civil liberties groups reacted with alarm. Opposition deputy Gedmantė Virgis called for an urgent parliamentary session and a freeze on municipal contracts with the company; she said the revelation showed how quickly routine public‑service projects can be repurposed. “Our laws protect people from state surveillance, not from private firms trading access,” Virgis said. AndesBridge’s founder released a short statement declining to comment on specifics, saying only that the company “provided lawful technical services” and would cooperate with investigators.
