Brazil displeased over being monitored in uncovered NSA operations
July 10, 2013
The June revelation of the United States National Security Agency (NSA)'s domestic and international surveillance operations, facilitated by former intelligence officer Edward Snowden, provoked a massive international response - some of it shocked and outraged. Representatives of numerous nations that the surveillance operations targeted publicly expressed their displeasure. Brazil is the latest to do so, according to the Guardian, and plans to launch a full investigation into the matter. The process could involve long conversations conducted using international calling cards.
The news source reported that Brazil's federal police and the Brazilian Telecommunications Agency will spearhead the probe, to determine the reasoning behind the NSA's examination of millions of emails and phone calls of the country's citizens. Additionally, Brazil's foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, claimed he would petition the United Nations to enforce regulations that would mitigate "abuses" by surveillance agencies.
Patriota also said, "The Brazilian government has asked for clarifications through the U.S. embassy in Brasilia and the Brazilian embassy in Washington." The source stated that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had ordered a meeting of her cabinet to discuss the issue.
According to The Associated Press, the Snowden information revealed that until at least 2002, the U.S. had maintained a facility in Brasilia for warehousing data it collected by intercepting foreign satellite communications, but that it was unclear whether the center still existed.
Glenn Greenwald, a journalist with the Guardian who lives in Rio de Janeiro, co-wrote a report detailing the operations in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo. He explained in a televised interview that the surveillance's major purpose was not to gather communications between Brazilian citizens so much as it was to spy on countries it could not easily access otherwise, but clarified that Brazil had been at least partially targeted in the operations.
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