Brazil Lashes Out at US Spy Programme
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Brazil's president delivered a stinging rebuke to the United States over its surveillance programme that has swept up data from billions of telephone calls and emails that have passed through Brazil, including her own.
Addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Dilma Rousseff also called on the global body to create a framework of Internet regulation to halt the US and other nations from using it as the "new battlefield" of espionage, Al Jazeera reported.
The Brazilian president accused the US of violating Brazil's sovereignty with what she called a "grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties".
"In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations," Rousseff said.
"Friendly governments and societies that seek to build a true strategic partnership, as in our case, cannot allow recurring illegal actions to take place as if they were normal. They are unacceptable."
Last week, she shelved an upcoming state trip to the US in a show of anger over the National Security Agency programme.
Brazil is an important hub for trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables. The NSA, tasked with intercepting potential terror communications, also reportedly hacked into the computer network of state-run oil company Petrobras.
