US spying station exposed in Brasilia

Iran Press TV

Sun Nov 10, 2013 2:44PM GMT

The Brazilian Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper has recently reported that the two rooms in the capital city of Brasilia rented by the US embassy could be an intelligence station for surveillance.

According to the newspaper, the rooms are located in an ordinary block in south Brasilia. Locals have told the newspaper that they had never seen any light from the rooms no matter it's cloudy or late at night. And people seldom got in or out the rooms.

The paper says that the rooms accommodate computers and communications devices.

Reuters says the US embassy has denied spying activities took place in the building, saying only computers and communications devices, such as walkie-talkies, were stored there. It also claimed that the radio broadcast was for diplomatic agents to use in emergency.

The former contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, revealed that the agency monitored millions of high-level Brazilian communications, according to documents leaked by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Snowden's revelations show that the NSA also monitored the phone calls of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as well as the state-owned oil giant Petrobras.

Outraged by the disclosures, Brasilia condemned the US spying saying that it posed a "new challenge" in relations between the two countries. President Rousseff condemned the NSA monitoring and cancelled a scheduled visit to Washington in protest.

Brazilian daily O Globo published an NSA document that showed the Brazilian embassy in Washington and the Brazilian mission to the UN in New York were targeted by the US spy agency.

US officials have defended the top-secret telephone and Internet spying programs claiming that they are essential to fight terrorism.

Based on Snowden revelations, millions of people around the globe were targeted by the NSA spying operations that monitored their telephone records and Internet data.

DB/DB