How Embarrassing

Brazil’s foreign minister on Tuesday excoriated the surveillance practices of the United States, dismissing as unsatisfactory Secretary of State John Kerry’s explanation of the wide-ranging collection of data on telephone and electronic communications and describing the spying as “a new type of challenge” in Brazil’s relationship with the United States.

[...]

Mr. Patriota, a former ambassador to the United States, said that the surveillance practices “cast a shadow of distrust” over bilateral relations and that “listening to explanations doesn’t mean accepting the status quo.”

[...]

Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota issued the unusual expression of indignation over the National Security Agency’s spying programs while standing next to Mr. Kerry at a news conference in Brasília, the capital, where the secretary of state had stopped on a two-day trip to South America, largely in an attempt to allay concerns in Brazil over the N.S.A.’s spying.

  NYT [emphasis mine]

I guess that’s a pretty clear answer to THAT attempt.

Patriota. What a great political name.