As Edward Snowden explores possible sanctuary in Venezuela, the whistleleaker's revelations continue to cause significant international ripples. Yesterday the UK's Guardian and Brazil's O Globo ran stories exploring how the NSA has for years tapped into Brazil's telecommunications networks and "indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored" the e-mail and phone conversations of millions of Brazillians. More, the reports claimed Brazil is being used as a South American spy portal to aid spying on other nations.

As you might expect Brazil leaders aren't particularly amused (and/or they're pretending to be shocked), and yesterday began an investigation into whether Brazilian telecom companies cooperated voluntarily with the United States. The United States appears to be doing what it does best when pressed for questions on its rampant spying; either outright lying or issuing statements that say absolutely nothing:

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Bernardo met Monday afternoon with U.S. Ambassador Thomas Shannon. "He denied that there is such monitoring here in Brazil, he said that there never was a data center and that there is no agreement with Brazilian companies to collect data in Brazilian territory," Bernardo said afterward, according to the state-run Agencia Brasil news agency.

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Meanwhile, the Guardian this week posted the second half of their video interview with Edward Snowden.