LaLiga turned the phones of 150,000 football fans into spy mobiles

The application activated the microphone to recognize the voice of football announcers in bars. Domestic service has a different pulse than commercial use that the system is capable of recognizing In May 2022 the Justice confirmed the fine to the entity for this practice, after being filed in 2019 In addition, LaLiga bought a database with the location from Google of all the bars in Spain to cross it with their customers The most important competition in Spanish football turned the phones of 150,000 fans into spy mobiles to hunt down the bars that offered the signal of the matches without paying the corresponding fee. On paper, fans installed an application that offered information about matches, results, statistics and rankings. But in addition, the program had an almost hidden functionality, which was noted in the specifications and which authorized Laliga to activate the phone’s microphone so that it could record audio fragments and send the location of the phone to the body. In total and according to the data to which NIUS has had access, there were 150,000 people who saw their terminal converted into a spy cell phone. Thus, the program distributed by LaLiga had an integrated program called Fluzo, capable of recognizing by the voice of the announcer after activating the microphone, if the broadcast that was taking place in a certain bar was the version for homes or the one intended for broadcast in bars, which has a different price. When the infraction was detected, the program also sent the location where the cut had been recorded, so that one of the 100 inspectors hired by LaLiga could show up at the premises. In 2019, it was the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) that sanctioned LaLiga with 250,000 euros for the use of this functionality, which even opened a business channel, since the same company linked to the entity began to provide the same service to the Belgian league, and to Sky Mexico. Before its use and according to internal data from the competition itself, 68% of Spanish bars broadcast football illegally. Half of the bars in Spain broadcast pirated football. In addition, LaLiga made one more move in 2018: it bought a base from Google of data with all the bars in Spain, registered in its maps application, to have a complete and legal list of the potential venues where the matches can be broadcast. Later, he crossed that data with the database of legal clients to eliminate them from his inspections, and with the rest he traced a series of routes with an artificial intelligence program called Xquadra. The result was a reduction of the alleged illegality within that market to 45%. On those dates, according to the documentation that NIUS has been able to confirm, the entity was concerned about the difference in millionaire income obtained by the Spanish competition for the television rights of the broadcast in bars against the English Premier, for example. While in Spain Laliga entered 135 million euros for this concept, in England the figure was around 600 million. According to the same source, the main form of piracy for bars is broadcasting games in a venue open to the public with a contract made to an address, which has a different rate. The second system, more residual, is the use of community devices, streaming via the Internet or especially known as cardsharing, that is, the use of decoders from other countries or with cards programmed to decrypt the signal from different providers.