Many Takers for Snoop-Free Brazilian Submarine Internet Cable

Google and Facebook besides several unnamed corporations are interested in switching their internet traffic between Europe and South America to a new undersea cable that will bypass America being set up by the Brazilian telecom firm Telebras.

The US$ 250 million cable project which was announced after the US spying of the Brazilian president and government was made public will earn money by selling communications bandwidth to entities who do not want their internet traffic to be routed through America, the Brazilian Communications Minister Andre Figueirdo said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.

Prior to the 2013 espionage revelations by Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the CIA, Telebras had announced plans to construct a data link directly with the US.

The report revealed that NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms that included Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a surveillance program known as Prism, Washington Post and Guardian news dailies reported in 2013.

Telebras had to abandon the plan following Brazilian government’s orders to seek a direct cable with Europe and would not involve the US.

Latin America were angered by revelations in Brazilian O Globo news daily’s July 10 2013 edition that the NSA ran a continent-wide surveillance program.

The paper cited leaked documents showing that the NSA ran Prism from a base in Brasilia seizing web traffic and details of phone calls from around the region at least until 2002.

By September 2013, more specific claims emerged that emails and phone calls on Mexican and Brazilian presidents were intercepted by NSA.

Prior to the 2013 espionage revelations, Telebras had announced plans to construct a data link directly with the US. However, the company abandoned this plan and following government orders began to seek a direct cable with Europe that would not involve the US.