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"The internet you want is only possible in an environment of respect for human rights," Rousseff said in a statement on her website, "especially privacy and freedom of expression."

It also makes Internet service providers not liable for content published by their users and requires them to comply with court orders to remove offensive material.

"Our legislation can influence the worldwide debate aimed at finding a way to guarantee real rights in a virtual world,"

"The real danger [from] the publicity about [NSA surveillance] is that other countries will begin to put very serious encryption – we use the term 'Balkanization' in general – to essentially split the internet and that the internet's going to be much more country specific," Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at an event in New York this month. "That would be a very bad thing, it would really break the way the internet works, and I think that's what I worry about."

"I don't want to pre-empt the work of journalists," he said, "but there's no question the US is engaged in economic spying. If there's information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests (not the national security) of the United States, they'll go after that information."

While evidence shows the NSA has spied on Brazil's Petrobras oil company, the US government has never been conclusively linked to the surveillance or theft of trade secrets on an international stage. If true, the revelations would have a grave diplomatic impact, particularly the government attempts to regain the trust of allied nations.