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Brazil Blasts Reported NSA Spying on President’s Communications

HeadlineSep 03, 2013

Revelations about spying by the National Security Agency based on leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden are continuing to emerge. On Sunday, the Brazilian news show Fantastico reported that the NSA targeted the emails, text messages and phone calls of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico. The news show used documents provided by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and obtained them from Snowden. They included an NSA slide dated June 2012, before Enrique Peña Nieto became president of Mexico, which included messages about his potential picks for Cabinet posts. Both Brazil and Mexico summoned their U.S. ambassadors following the revelations. Mexico called for the United States to investigate, while Brazil’s foreign minister demanded a written explanation and suggested Brazil might cancel an upcoming U.S. visit by President Dilma Rousseff.

Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, Brazilian ambassador: “Today at nine this morning, we summoned the ambassador of the United States, Thomas Shannon, to my Cabinet and explained the indignation of the Brazilian government in light of these facts contained in these documents which were revealed. The violations of the communications of our lady president of the republic, from our point of view, this represents an impermissible and unacceptable violation of Brazilian sovereignty.”

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