Brazil lower house passes anti-spy law
Iran Press TV
Wed Mar 26, 2014 8:32AM GMT
Brazil's lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, has passed a new anti-spy Internet law in the wake of recent revelations about global spying activities by the United States.
The legislation, approved on Tuesday, aims at protecting the privacy of Brazilian Internet users and guaranteeing equal access to the World Wide Web.
According to the rule, companies such as Google and Facebook are subject to Brazilian laws and courts in cases involving information on the South American country's citizens.
"Brazil is a giant country, and passage of this law will provide a model for implementing net neutrality as a policy measure in other major markets," said Katherine Maher, advocacy director for International digital rights organization Access.
The new law was passed following revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on personal communications of Brazilians, including those of President Dilma Rousseff.
In September last year, Brazil's Globo television network said that emails, phone calls and text messages of Rousseff had been the target of the NSA's espionage activities.
This came three months after American whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs, which revealed that the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data.
The scandal took even broader dimensions later, when the former NSA contractor revealed information about the organization's espionage activities targeting "friendly countries."
SSM/PR/HRB
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