Brazil's partner in outrage over US spying is Germany. As the two nations prepare a UN resolution, it's interesting to note that among Rousseff's lofty pronouncements on the subject is this: "The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating fundamental human rights of citizens of another country."
Whatever the level of US electronic surveillance before 9/11, it's clear that it was hugely and somewhat indiscriminately cranked up thereafter.
The hard core of the group that carried out the 9/11 attacks was the Hamburg cell, led by Egyptian Mohamed Atta, who had lived in Hamburg for a decade.
He frequently travelled to Afghanistan for training and to meet Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who tasked him with undertaking what was known as "the planes operation".
It could be argued that once in America the hijackers did more than enough to have brought themselves to the US authorities' attention. But it's quite conceivable that if German intelligence had done a better job on the Hamburg cell in the late 1990s, the US wouldn't be eavesdropping on German communications now.
Like the Brazilians, the Germans have got in a tremendous huff over US spying. According to a report in last weekend's Herald, "it will be a long time, if ever, before trust is restored and Germany forgives the US for eavesdropping on its leader and snooping on its citizens".
You'd think Germany might be a little less stiff-necked given that the offence hasn't had calamitous consequences or, as far as we know, caused a single death.
After all, 186,000 Americans died in the cause of liberating Europe from the Third Reich.
Rather than abandon the war-ravaged country, America then set about rebuilding West Germany via the Marshall Plan. The Berlin airlift prevented West Berlin being starved into submission and for five decades the American military shield prevented West Germany being absorbed into the Soviet empire.
Apparently that vast, protracted commitment now counts for naught.
But as the Germans were making themselves at home on the moral high ground, news emerged that an enormous stash of looted art work had been discovered in a Munich apartment.
Not only did it remind the world of an often overlooked aspect of Nazi barbarity, it also focused attention on modern Germany's studiously unco-operative attitude to identifying and returning stolen art treasures.
As Anne Webber of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe pointed out in the Daily Telegraph, the Bavarian state holds thousands of works stolen by the Nazis.
Even though Germany has signed international conventions regarding looted art, Bavaria has declined to publish a list of the works in question or an annotated catalogue of the confiscation and distribution of art works compiled by a Nazi art dealer.
Indeed the Munich apartment discovery became public knowledge only because it was leaked to a magazine. Whatever the reasons for it, Germany's recalcitrance invites the suspicion that it has little interest in righting this wrong, perhaps the only crime among the multitude perpetrated by the Nazis that can be undone.
And while the international media has been both the vehicle for and driver of much of the opprobrium dumped on America, the trial of former News International editors now in progress at the Old Bailey centres on a phone hacking conspiracy with the specific aim of intruding on privacy, as opposed to combating terrorism.
The ultimate objectives were money and power - to sell more newspapers and bolster the influence on British public life of an unelected, foreign media magnate.
