14 DAY TRIAL // Brazil isn’t the only South American country targeted by the United States’ National Security Agency, new documents reveal.
According to O Globo, similar situations to the one in Brazil have also taken place in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, to name just a few.
According to the publication, the United States doesn’t seem to limit its interest to military affairs, but also extends it to trade secrets. For instance, oil was important for the activities in Venezuela, while energy was important in Mexico.
After Brazil and Mexico, Colombia was a second priority target for the NSA. According to documents that O Globo had access to, the collection of information in Colombia was constant over the past few years and hasn’t registered any important peaks, like it happened with Brazil.
Latin American countries were targeted with the help of two programs. One was Prism and the second was “Boundless Informant.” While Prism enables access to emails, chat logs and voice calls from American-based Internet companies, “Boundless Informant” catalogs phone calls and Internet access.
With the help of Prism, the NSA collected data regarding oil and military purchases from Venezuela and energy and narcotics from Mexico.
Other countries that were constantly spied on, but on a lower level, were Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador.
Over the weekend, news broke that the NSA had been targeting Brazilian citizens and companies with their spying programs. The U.S. intelligence agency was most active here than in any other Latin American countries.
The local government is already launching an investigation to see if any of the local telecom companies were working with the NSA.
Furthermore, politicians are pressing for a favorable decision regarding Snowden’s asylum request, especially now that they know Brazil was a favored target for their activities.