By CCTV correspondent Paulo Cabral

BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Brazil is one of most important hubs for undersea telecommunications cable crossing the Atlantic. That’s one reason why the US intelligence community has apparently tapped it in efforts to eavesdrop on Brazilians.

This public Internet facility in Brazil - a Telecentro - isn’t an obvious target for American intelligence agencies monitoring threats to United States security. That’s why it sounded strange when documents brought to light by Edward Snowden revealed that a friendly nation - with no history of terrorism - had its telecommunications under heavy American surveillance. Brazilian’s didn’t like this a bit.

Reporter: “Of course, people here are uncomfortable with the notion that there may be an Orwellian ’Big Brother’ recording all their on line communications. But experts say that the U.S. intelligence community isn’t so interested in what is generated here, but rather all the information that goes through Brazil when as it travels around the world.”

Former Brazilian ambassador to the US Rubens Barbosa said, "I don’t think that the focus of the monitoring was Brazil. There are news that the embassy in Washington and the mission in New York were in one way or another monitored, because there was sensitive information of interest to the United States, but I think that the focus of the monitoring here was the undersea cables transmitting communications from Asia, from Africa, passing along the coast of Brazil and going to the United States."

As this submarine cable map from the research company, TeleGeography, shows, undersea cable from Europe and Africa cross the Atlantic to Brazil where they link to other cables connecting Brazil to the US.

When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry came to Brazil in August he heard complaints about the monitoring, but reaffirmed that it will continue to happen-for the sake of world security.

Marcello Zuffo, professor with University of Sao Paulo, said, "We need to enhance our cyber-defence infrastructure. So in this moment the government is investing in broadband infrastructure on fiber optics and satellites as well as the defence community in Brazil - army, navy and air force - they’re creating national centers for cyber-defence."

Information is one of the most valuable assets of our time. The revelation of the scale of U.S. eavesdropping on Brazilians didn’t surprise intelligence experts here, but the shockwaves among ordinary Brazilians have yet to subside.

(Source: cntv.cn)