The Associated Press reports: Brazil’s president delivered a stinging rebuke Tuesday to the United States over its surveillance program that has swept up data from billions of telephone calls and emails that have passed through Brazil —including her own.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on the first day of its annual meeting, President Dilma Rousseff accused the U.S. of violating Brazil’s sovereignty with what she called a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties.”

“In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations,” Rousseff said. “Friendly governments and societies that seek to build a true strategic partnership, as in our case, cannot allow recurring illegal actions to take place as if they were normal. They are unacceptable.”

Last week, she shelved an upcoming state trip to the U.S. in a show of anger over the U.S. National Security Agency program.

Brazil is an important hub for trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables. The NSA, tasked with intercepting potential terror communications, also reportedly hacked into the computer network of state-run oil company Petrobras.

Rousseff said the NSA also collected economic and strategic corporate data, as well as messages by Brazilian diplomats, including to the United Nations, and from her own office. [Continue reading…]