Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, announced earlier this week that the country’s legislation will be changed in order to prevent it from becoming a target for international espionage schemes.
The announcement was made after an emergency meeting with the head minister Gilberto Carvalho, alongside the country’s Justice, Defence, Communications, Media, Corporate Security and Foreign Affair ministers, to discuss a response to the latest espionage actions by the USA.
The meeting followed a story on Brazilian TV programme ‘Fantástico’, in which it was revealed that the American National Security Agency was spying on Dilma Roussef’s communications.
Amongst several measures, Dilma Roussef is planning to impose a law which will see companies considered accomplices of espionage punished, even to the point of closing them down.
“It could be a bank or a radio broadcaster. If you cooperate with these schemes, you will see your operation licence in Brazil terminated,” said Communications minister, Paulo Bernardo, to Brazilian newspaper O Estadão.
In addittion, the government is trying to force foreign websites to store data from users in Brazil rather than abroad. In the internal communications front, security mechanisms will also be reinforced.
According to Dilma Roussef, the interest shown by the USA in Brazil is due not to political reasons, but economic, namely from American oil companies.
