Report: US spied on Brazil's Petrobras, Google

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden indicate the National Security Agency spied on Brazil's state-run oil company, the private computer networks of Google and a company that facilitates most of the world's international bank transfers, a Brazilian TV report says.
Globo TV, however, gave no information about what the NSA may have obtained from Petrobras, Google and the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, an organization better known as SWIFT that oversees international bank transfers thought to be secure transactions.
All three companies are included in an NSA training manual for new agents on how to target the private computer networks of big companies, the report said.

Earlier reports based on Snowden's documents revealed the existence of the NSA's PRISM program, which gives the agency comprehensive access to customer data from companies like Google and Facebook.
Separate reports last week in the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica, also based on Snowden's leak, said the NSA and its British counterpart had developed "new access opportunities" into Google's computers by 2012, but the documents didn't indicate how extensive the project was or what kind of data it could access.
James Klapper, director of US national intelligence, said in a statement that "it is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing."

The NSA collects the information to provide "the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy," the statement said. "It also could provide insight into other countries' economic policy or behavior which could affect global markets."

It said the intelligence community's "efforts to understand economic systems and policies and monitor anomalous economic activities is critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security."
Klapper added that the NSA has had "success in disrupting terror networks by following their money as it moves around the globe."

"What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of or give intelligence we collect to US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line," he said.
Offices of the Petrobras oil company and Google's Brazil offices were closed Sunday and officials could not be reached for comment. An emailed request for comment from SWIFT wasn't immediately answered.