President of Brazil Lashes Out At NSA Espionage Programs In Speech To UN

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Guardian reports that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, accusing the NSA of violating international law by its indiscriminate collection of personal information of Brazilian citizens and economic espionage targeted on the country's strategic industries. 'Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate information – often of high economic and even strategic value – was at the center of espionage activity,' said Rousseff. 'Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the UN and the office of the president of the republic itself, had their communications intercepted.' Rousseff's angry speech was a direct challenge to President Barack Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own address to the UN general assembly, and represented the most serious diplomatic fallout to date from the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Washington's efforts to smooth over Brazilian outrage over NSA espionage have so far been rebuffed by Rousseff, who has proposed that Brazil build its own internet infrastructure. '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.'"

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough said.

Re:Good

[Luckyo]

Considering that contents of the speech were widely known quite a while before it was given by the press, I imagine they were probably stepping up their efforts to pour money into Rousseff's political opponents pockets while preparing an assassination mission, as US has usually done when a Latin America leader didn't please them.

Yeah, talk me more about those "Washington Efforts

[xvan]

Washington's efforts to smooth over Brazilian outrage over NSA espionage have so far been rebuffed by Rousseff

Yeah, talk me more about those "Washington Efforts"...

Obama with a poker face: Well we spy on you to protect the world against Terrorism
Dilma: So I was suspected of terrorism, even if I was the candidate for the ruling party of an country without conflicts with the US.
Obama: But with terror...
Dilma: And If I was suspected of terrorism, the why did you spy on our major petrol company...
Obama: Err terror...
Dilma: Fuck-You.

accusing the NSA of violating international law by [...]

And the rest of the world, doesn't care what is the NSA, for us it's the US that's spying, so no she accused the the US...

Re:NSA's fucking job

[IamTheRealMike]

You know, I've read this excuse a million times since Snowden did his thing, and I'm sick of it.

The problem is it's an abuse of language. Saying "Every country spies. It's one of those things governments are supposed to do" is nothing but rhetorical sleight of hand. The word spy conjures up cartoons of men in pork-pie hats and long raincoats following some traitor in a car. The word is loaded with cold war imagery. It reminds people of a time when there was an "us" vs a "them" and spying was a very small scale and targeted activity done against "them" or, at very least, those of "us" working for "them".

We need a new word to describe what's going on in todays world. Spying doesn't even come close to being the right word. How about totalitarian surveillance? But even that isn't strong enough to communicate the reality we are living in.

In today's reality there's no us vs them. There's no good vs evil, capitalism vs communism. There's just bureaucrats and their power, exercised over their own people as readily as over foreigners.

This is not only not "one of those things governments are supposed to do", it's often one of those things governments are expressly prohibited from doing by their own laws. And that's for good reasons!

Please, don't flatter the NSA by calling them spies. They aren't spies at this point. They are real life equivalents of O'Brien, the dedicated agent of totalitarian control in 1984. O'Brien is a far darker and scarier character than anyone who could be described as a spy.

Re:Can we get rid of Bush yet

[TWiTfan]

Nevermind, all of this is acceptable as long as a Democrat is running things.

I'm not sure what alternate universe you just came over from. But in this universe, most of us here on Slashdot have plenty of disgust with BOTH major political parties in the U.S., and their leaders. The closest thing to a consensus here is that the "Democrats" and "Republicans" are both just wings of the Corporationalist Party that really controls everything here now.

Re:Protesting too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

We are superior.

My grandparents remember when a certain country between Poland and France had the same idea. It didn't end well, for anyone.

Re:Yeah, talk me more about those "Washington Effo

[DarkOx]

I suspect its mostly the petrodollar issue. Because lets face it; the US Economy is largely farcical.

If a major non-dollar international trade circuit developed, the following drop in dollar demand would probably be so steep there is nothing the FED could do to control inflation.

Stands to bring down the entire house of cards.