Brazil president urges Congress to vote on bill averting US spying

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has called on Congress to urgently vote on a bill shielding Brazilians from further US spying.

The so-called "internet constitution" is being written by a legislator in Rousseff's left-wing Workers' Party, Alessandro Molon, and aims to oblige Google, Facebook and other internet companies to store locally-gathered data inside Brazil.

Reports say Rousseff has asked Congress to take up the legislation in the next 45 days.

According to a spokesman for the legislator, on Thursday, Rousseff asked Molon to include language specifically ordering the foreign companies to maintain all data on servers housed in Brazil.

"This would be a turning point for these companies," said a senior Brazilian official, naming Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp as examples, adding that Rousseff has taken the move with the aim of protecting Brazilians from further US spying.

This comes after Brazilian Globo television network said earlier this week that it had received intelligence documents indicating Washington had been spying on the oil company.

In addition, last week Globo reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted the communications of both Brazilian and Mexican presidents.

On September 1, the television channel said that the NSA spied on emails, phone calls and text messages of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto when he was running for office.

Following a report by Britain’s Guardian, Rousseff warned that she might cancel a visit to the US scheduled for next month if President Barack Obama failed to provide her with a convincing explanation.

In June, American whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs, under which NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

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Source: Press TV