Brazil to host global internet summit

11102013

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff

Brazilian leaders have announced they plan to host an international conference on internet governance next year, a declaration that comes after the nation has lobbied without success to change NSA policies used by the US to monitor Brazil.

President Dilma Rousseff, on consulting with Fadi Chehade, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), announced via Twitter a conference would be held in April.

“We have decided that Brazil will host in April 2014 an international summit of government, industry, civil society and academia,” she wrote tweeted Wednesday.

The ongoing leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that Brazil has become a favorite target of the National Security Agency since the US intelligence program launched the PRISM electronic surveillance program in 2007. Along with monitoring the online activity of Brazilian citizens, the NSA has quietly kept watch on diplomatic activity and the South American nation’s oil giant Petrobras.

Rousseff has since put off a scheduled state visit to the US and used her speech at the United Nations to condemn what she deemed “a breach of international law and an affront” to Brazil’s independence.