US Secretary of State John Kerry visits Brazil on Tuesday following a stop in Colombia that saw him defending American surveillance programmes.
Since the vast telephone and Internet surveillance programmes were brought to light by intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, Washington officials have insisted they are perfectly legal and have played a role in foiling dozens of terrorist attacks.
“I think it’s very obvious to everybody that this is a dangerous world we’re living in,” Kerry told reporters in Bogota on Monday, referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“And we are necessarily engaged in a very complex effort to prevent terrorists from taking innocent lives in many different places.”
He described his conversation on the matter with Colombian counterpart Maria Angela Holguin as “very, very straightforward.”
“Frankly, we work on a huge number of issues and this was, in fact, a very small part of the overall conversation,” he said.
He added that it was a topic “in which I am confident that I was able to explain thoroughly, precisely, how this has received the support of all three branches of our government, it has been completely conducted under our Constitution and the law, and how we have respected the concerns of other countries and will continue to.”