BackGoogle data policy faces probe in Brazil after Snowden leaks
President Dilma Rousseff has asked the federal police and telecom regulator to probe whether firms were involved in spying
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Rio de Janeiro/Brasilia: Brazilian authorities will investigate data storage policies of technology companies such as Google Inc. as part of a probe into a news report the US government spied on e-mail traffic in Latin America’s largest economy.
“We need to see where data was stored," President Dilma Rousseff told reporters on Monday in Brasilia. “Often data are stored outside Brazil, primarily Google data. “We plan to require that data from Brazilians be stored within Brazil."
Rousseff asked the federal police and telecommunications regulator Anatel to investigate whether local companies were involved in spying. Brazil will raise the issue of espionage, which Rousseff said would be a violation of Brazil’s sovereignty, to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The US National Security Agency over the past decade intercepted data from telephone calls and e-mails by residents and companies in Brazil, O Globo newspaper reported 6 July, citing documents collected by former national-security contractor Edward Snowden.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Monday denied to comment on the report. Google’s corporate communications office didn’t immediately respond to a telephone call and e-mail seeking comment on its data storage policy.
The US ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, met with Brazil’s chief minister of institutional security Jose Elito Carvalho on Monday to discuss the allegations, according to Rousseff’s press office.
Allegations
“We have spoken with Brazilian officials regarding these allegations," Psaki said, according to a transcript of the press conference. “We plan to continue our dialogue with the Brazilians through normal diplomatic channels. But those are conversations that, of course, we would keep private."
When visiting Brazil in May, US vice-president Joseph Biden announced the US government would host Rousseff on a state visit in October. He called for increased trade and improved relations between the two nations, which he called friends.
“For many in Brazil, the US doesn’t start with a clean slate," Biden said on 29 May in Rio de Janeiro. “There’s some good reason for that scepticism. That scepticism still exists and it’s understandable." BLOOMBERG
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