Brazil accuses Canada of economic espionage

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The Brazilian government has demanded that Canada explain the role of its intelligence services in “unacceptable” incidents of espionage, which targeted the Latin American country’s Ministry of Mines and Energy. The announcement came just hours after a television report accused Canada of spying on Brazil’s mining and energy sector, allegedly for commercial gain. The report, which aired on O Globo television on Sunday night, said the spying had been carried out by Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC). Staffed by around 2,200 employees, the CSEC is Canada’s foremost signals intelligence agency, tasked with carrying out communications interception around the world. According to O Globo, the CSEC collected the metadata of emails and calls associated with computer and telephone systems belonging to the Ministry of Mines and Energy. The information allowed Canadian intelligence to effectively map the communications structure of the government Ministry, through a network mapping program codenamed OLYMPIA. O Globo said its report was based on a CSEC PowerPoint presentation titled “Advanced Network Tradecraft”, which was produced in the summer of 2012 and shared with Canada’s allies, including the United Kingdom and the United States. The television station said that the information was based on a batch of documents leaked by former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency technical expert Edward Snowden. Snowden defected from the US last summer and is currently living in Russia, were he has been offered political asylum. The Brazilian television station spoke to Edison Lobao, Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister, who said that Canada’s primary economic interests in Brazil centered on “the mining sector”, and hinted that the alleged CSEC spying might have “served corporate interests”. Early on Monday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff accused Canada of violating Brazilian sovereignty and demanded that Canada acknowledge and explain the reasons behind what she described an “unacceptable” instance of spying. Shortly afterwards, Brazil’s Minster of Foreign Affairs, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, called Canada’s ambassador to Brazil, Jamal Khokhar, in order to convey Brasilia’s “indignation” over the revelations. Meanwhile, the Canadian government’s Director of Communications, Jason MacDonald, told media in Canada that Ottawa could “neither confirm nor deny” the allegations.