Brazil’s foreign minister expressed “deep concern” over the issue and said his government would press the United Nations to take action that “preserves the sovereignty of all countries.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/world/americas/brazil-voices-deep-concern-over-gathering-of-data-by-us.html?ref=world&_r=0
Reacting to a local news report asserting that the United States has been collecting data on telephone calls and e-mail traffic in Brazil, the foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, said Sunday that his government would pursue United Nations measures “to impede abuses and protect the privacy” of international Internet communications to “guarantee cybersecurity that protects the rights of citizens.”
His government was taking action because of its “deep concern at the report that electronic and telephone communications of Brazilian citizens are being the object of espionage by organs of American intelligence.”
The report on the American monitoring of Brazilian communications was published by O Globo, the main daily newspaper here, and said it was based on documents from Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive contractor for the National Security Agency
In a posting Sunday for the British newspaper The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, one of the writers of the O Globo article, said that “the N.S.A. has for years systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunications network and indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the mail and telephone records of millions of Brazilians.”
Brazilian news organizations began reporting that the country’s Federal Police and national communications authority would investigate to see if companies here cooperated.
The United States supported and aided the coup that brought the military to power here in 1964, beginning a 21-year dictatorship that routinely tapped the telephones and intercepted the mail of both Brazilians and foreigners thought to be in opposition to the government.