A Brazilian television show, citing classified documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, reported Sunday night that the Obama administration has spied on the state-run Petrobras oil producer, Brazil's most important company.
President Obama and administration officials have publicly asserted that intelligence-gathering is focused on stopping terrorist threats and fighting transnational crime. But the documents revealed on "Fantastico," a program on the Globo TV network, appear to show that the United States may target multinational companies, although it was not clear for what purpose.
The documents, provided to "Fantastico" by Rio-based journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has collaborated with Snowden, included a slide labeled "top secret" in which Petrobras was named as a target among a group of companies. The program said the NSA focused on the oil giant's computer network, as well as on those of Google and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a European firm that enables money transfers.
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