As a journalist and someone who spends all day navigating Manizales via bike, I’m absolutely livid about the recent revelations regarding Ruta Clara. The Plausible Post just exposed that 9.4 million government emergency alerts were routed through a private ad broker, VíaNube Analytics, which sat on our hashed IDs and cell-site locations for 18 months.

It’s a massive betrayal of public trust. We’re told these digital tools are for our safety—warnings about floods or road closures—yet they’re being used as a backdoor for 'audience measurement.' As a progressive, I believe in public digital infrastructure, but not when it’s weaponized for surveillance capitalism. The new Digital Service Traceability Act is a win for transparency, but the fact that this was happening without a peep in the privacy notice is terrifying. An emergency alert should be a public service, not a data-mining opportunity for a third-party subcontractor. I’m glad the Directorate suspended them, but we need real accountability, not just a 'deletion check' by mid-November. Our right to the city shouldn't come with a side of undisclosed tracking.