The Snowden affair is more than a potential film for people abroad, who, if we are to believe the NSA, are the sole targets of its newly-exposed alphabet-soup of surveillance programs. Last week, Brazil became the latest nation highlighted in documents released by Edward Snowden, and people in that country are genuinely angry about it.
This column from O Globo quotes some of the country’s most well-known figures in the arts, sports, academia, and politics, about what they think of news that American surveillance has been targeting them. Here are a few of the quote it contains:
Carlos Langoni – director of World Economics Center at FGV [Getúlio Vargas Foundation] and former president of Brazil Central Bank:
“Information technology has become an instrument of power, and the disadvantages that emerging countries face in relation to the superpowers are brutal. Brazil is completely vulnerable to cyber attack … The problem goes beyond privacy. We live in a world in which digital technology advances at an astonishing pace, and governments are unprepared. And those who possess this technology use it as they wish … . It is very unlikely that a resolution to this can be arrived at through international agreements.”
Torben Grael – Two-time Olympic sailing champion:
“It’s incredible. If it were a company – an individual doing this, it would be a gigantic scandal. But since it is the United States, it’s different. It seems that there is a tendency to cover this up a bit, especially on the part of European nations. People must have their privacy respected.”
Roberto Cabot – artist that pioneered use of the Internet in his work:
“I’m not really a ‘nationalist,’ but having our digital traffic completely controlled by another country seems like a disadvantage to me. It never ceases to amaze me to see how honest people seem to be divided on this state of affairs. Nor do I believe we have any choice but complete transparency for everything and everyone. Privacy as it existed up to the end of the 20th century is over. The only defense against transparency of the individual will be complete transparency of things and institutions.”
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