Glenn Greenwald. The NSA's mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians: As it does in many non-adversarial countries, the surveillance agency is bulk collecting the communications of millions of citizens of Brazil. The Guardian, 7 Jul 2013.
The NSA has, for years[, as part of the NSA's "FAIRVIEW" program]:
- systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network; and
- indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians.
[...] People around the world [had] no idea that all of their telephonic and internet communications are being collected, stored and analyzed by a distant government.
How FAIRVIEW works?
- NSA partners with a large US telecommunications company, the identity of which is currently unknown [as of 7 Jul 2013]; and
- that US company then partners with telecoms in the foreign countries.
Those partnerships allow the US company access to those countries' telecommunications systems, and that access is then exploited to direct traffic to the NSA's repositories.
Implications
- It vests the US government with boundless power over those to whom it has no accountability;
- It permits allies of the US - including aggressively oppressive ones - to benefit from indiscriminate spying on their citizens' communications;
- It radically alters the balance of power between the US and ordinary citizens of the world;
- And it sends an unmistakable signal to the world that while the US very minimally values the privacy rights of Americans, it assigns zero value to the privacy of everyone else on the planet.