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Electronic snooping planned at U.S./Mexican border

The Drug Enforcement Agency wants to find a small business with a Top Secret security clearance that can snoop on Spanish language conversations transmitted over foreign communications systems and "instantaneously" translate those conversations from Spanish into English.

The contractor would operate out of the Special Operations Watch Section of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center, near the U.S./Mexican border.

The vendor would use "signals equipment" to detect, identify and exploit "intercepted foreign communications at all levels," says a sources sought notice published by the DEA on April 14.

The translation company would be expected to create online records of "complex foreign voice radio transmissions containing technical terminology, advanced grammar and syntax, and colloquial conversational forms," the notice continued. The firm would also provide quality control for what’s known as Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, products.

Interested prospective contractors can contact , contract specialist, at 202-307-7826 by April 24.

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