Joshua Foust wrote a must-read article about the latest Greenwald/Snowden revelations regarding NSA’s surveillance of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico.
It turns out both nations have vast surveillance operations which I detailed in my column yesterday, but Foust goes into greater details about what, specifically, each nation is up to.
But while Greenwald is furious at the NSA’s email-snooping programs, he does not condemn Brazil’s own PRISM-like system to steal email data for government analysis.
[...] Earlier this year, ABIN was accused of spying on a movement to oppose the construction of the Belo Monto Dam in Northern Brazil. That wasn’t a unique incident, either: in June Brazil’s intel service launched a massive effort to surveil and eavesdrop on social media — a reaction to this year’s mass protests that Brazilian police violently beat down.
Pres. Roussef did not like being surprised by social unrest, so she ordered the monitoring — yet she seems offended the U.S. would monitor her to avoid surprises.
There’s a lot more. What about Mexico?
The U.S. and Mexican governments jointly operate a gigantic spying complex in Mexico City that tracks down drug cartel figures and organized criminal groups. But after last December’s election of Nieto, many in the U.S. worried that this center would be shut down over disagreements about how best to counter cartels, even while Nieto created a newly-centralized intelligence service under American consultation.
“Intelligence cooperation between the two countries is extensive,” Benoît Gomis, a specialist in organized crime and counternarcotics at Chatham House, told me.
Meanwhile, now that Greenwald has helped Brazil learn more about what the U.S. is doing, Brazil is providing some quid pro quo:
[Brazilian lawmakers] asked Tuesday that an American journalist living in Rio de Janeiro who first broke news about the National Security Agency’s program receive protection from federal police.
Senators want journalist Glenn Greenwald and his domestic partner, David Miranda, protected because the future testimony of both is considered fundamental to the investigation.
Interesting timing. Greenwald helps Brazil, Brazil helps Greenwald.