14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA scandal began in early June, but it only really hit countries in South America a month later. Ever since then, the situation between countries there and the United States has gone completely downhill.
One of the countries that has been most affected by NSA spying is Brazil.
The country’s name appeared in the first reports about the US intelligence agency targeting countries throughout Latin America, alongside Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina.
The country’s government launched in investigation following the reports, trying to see if telecom companies in Brazil were really working with the NSA.
It wasn’t long after when the country’s president said that she would like to apply some new regulations for these companies and even have those who are proven to have worked with the NSA closed down.
As things seemed to be going back to normal, a new report shook the country. Local publication O Globo revealed new data indicating the NSA had spied on Dilma Rousseff, the country’s president and her Mexican counterpart.
As expected, the news didn’t bode well on the relations between the two countries, as Rousseff demanded public apologies from the US president. A few days later, the two met face to face in Russia at the G20 summit, where Obama tried to diffuse the situation, with very little success.
Rumors that Dilma Rousseff was going to cancel her trip to the United States appeared immediately, although she admitted that things could still be patched up.
One week later, another report from the same newspaper, based on the same Snowden stash of NSA documents, informed the world that the intelligence agency was also delving in a bit of economic espionage.
One of the targets on its list was Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, a key structure in the local economy.
As the NSA tried explaining that it was only looking at Petrobras to foresee an event that could damage the world’s economy, such as another crisis, Dilma Rousseff and the Brazilian government quickly qualified the event as economic espionage.
In the meantime, the president has officially canceled her trip to Washington and has issued no statement about a possible date when she’ll make the voyage.
It was also revealed, today, that Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant has put together an emergency plan to invest large amounts of money in IT and cyber security, something that obviously stems from the same NSA leaks.
As time goes by, it seems the US is finding it more and more difficult to maintain diplomatic relations with countries that reports indicate it has spied on.