Thread: Brazil says US violated its sovereignty with spying programme

Fort.com
By Samantha Pearson in São Paulo
September 2, 2013 9:57 pm
Brazil says US violated its sovereignty with spying programme

The US National Security Agency also intercepted messages sent by Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican president, while he was still a candidate discussing future ministerial appointments, according to the Brazilian news network Globo.

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Brazil has reacted with outrage to reports that the US spied on the phone calls and emails of President Dilma Rousseff, straining Washington’s already fragile relationship with the Latin American country.

The US National Security Agency also intercepted messages sent by Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican president, while he was still a candidate discussing future ministerial appointments, according to the Brazilian news network Globo.

The report, which was aired late on Sunday on Globo’s popular television show Fantástico, was co-authored by journalist Glenn Greenwald and based on documents he obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

José Eduardo Cardozo, Brazil’s justice minister, who was in Washington last week to discuss the country’s concerns about the US surveillance programme, branded the NSA’s actions “a clear violation of our national sovereignty”.

“If these facts are proved, we are dealing with an inadmissible, unacceptable situation . . . it is something that Brazilians cannot accept peacefully,” Mr Cardozo told Globo.

Fantástico’s report centres on an internal NSA presentation labelled “top secret” from June 2012 designed to showcase a new tracking method, using Brazil and Mexico as case studies.

The presentation explains how the NSA was able to track phone calls, emails and the IP addresses of Ms Rousseff, her advisers and connected third parties, penetrating what it described as “tech-savvy” targets.

Documents shown by the programme also reveal how the NSA intercepted messages sent by Mexico’s Mr Peña Nieto, discussing who he planned to name as ministers once elected.
Brazil has been one of the most outspoken critics of the NSA’s mass monitoring scheme, brought to light when the former contractor Mr Snowden leaked documents to Mr Greenwald, a journalist for The Guardian living in Rio de Janeiro.

Mr Cardozo said he had met Ms Rousseff about the matter and that she had summoned the outgoing US ambassador, Thomas Shannon, to provide an explanation.

Brazil has also pledged to push through anti-spying measures at the UN and International Telecommunications Union.

A recent column published by Globo and co-written by Glenn Greenwald cited documents from Mr Snowden concluding that the country was one of the priority targets for US spies, alongside Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan.

The latest report comes at a delicate moment for Ms Rousseff as she prepares for a visit to Washington next month, the first state visit by a Brazilian leader in more than two decades.

The trip is the latest attempt to repair the relationship after years of mutual suspicion under Ms Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who sparked controversy in 2010 when he attempted to broker a nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran.

David Fleischer, political scientist at the University of Brasília, said the scandal is unlikely to derail the visit but could be used by Brazil as a “bargaining chip” to lobby for one of its long held wishes: a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

“It’s the first state visit since the 1990s so it is considered a very important step in the bilateral relations so I don’t think this is going to upset it unless something worse comes out,” he said.

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