This new revelation follows a Guardian report from July revealing that the NSA has been monitoring the communications of Brazilian citizens. At the time, Brazil’s foreign minister expressed “deep concern” about the news, and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff convened a meeting of cabinet ministers to discuss the story.
So, naturally, this new report has fostered more outraged in the Brazilian and Mexican governments.
Fantastico showed what it said was an NSA document dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, who was still a candidate at that time. In the messages, Pena Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.A separate document displayed communication patterns between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and
her top advisers, Fantastico said, although no specific written passages were included in the report.
Brazil’s justice minister has already called the report, if proven true, to be a huge violation of Brazil’s sovereignty. In the case of that country’s president, Greenwald told the Associated Press that her communications were intercepted by an NSA program “used by the NSA to open and read emails and online chats.”
You can read the Guardian’s report on the fallout here.
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac