Brazil to create its own email system after protesting US spying

Brazil says it will develop its own in-house email system to strengthen privacy and avoid spying it blames on the United States. The country will ditch Microsoft Outlook and develop its own new, custom platform, CNET reported Monday. The move comes following revelations that communications between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her key aides have been monitored by the U.S. National Security Agency. Rousseff condemned NSA's spying as a breach of international law in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last month and canceled a planned visit to Washington in protest. "I have mandated the deployment of a secure email system throughout the federal government," Rousseff tweeted Sunday, calling it "the first step to expand privacy and inviolability of official messages." The new system will run on a cloud platform maintained by Brazil's Federal Data Processing Service. The Brazilian government is also reportedly considering laying a new underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe to avoid routing the country's Internet connections through the United States.