Rousseff was furious over the reported snooping into her personal communications and a senior government official said on Wednesday that she might cancel the state visit to the White House unless she got an apology.
"The American people don't have a Big Brother who is snooping into their business," he said, amplifying his answer to a question about the hunt for a national security leaker.
After its snooping into communications of the Associated Press and of a Fox News reporter was revealed, the administration agreed to certain restraints.
After two days of intense Democratic infighting, Bernie Sanders apologized for his staff's snooping into Hillary Clinton's campaign files at the opening of a cantankerous presidential debate Saturday that underscored sharp differences among the candidates on foreign policy, combating terrorism and raising taxes.
The government's snooping into more than 20 phone lines of Associated Press reporters over a two-month period, as well as President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder's detachment from the investigative process, has struck a nerve.
Following the intervention by the new MI5 boss, Andrew Parker, in defence of large-scale internet monitoring by GCHQ, 58% believed that "the media should back off from exposing too much about state surveillance", compared with 34% who regard the media as "having a duty to inform the public about state snooping into their affairs".
Mark Kleiman at the Reality-Based Community, however, finds the State Department's explanation credible, up to a point: I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that snooping into Obama's passport records was some sort of Administration plot.
He recalled meeting students in lefty Berkeley, California, where he downplayed the right to bear arms but talked a lot about the right to privacy, and decried government snooping into youngsters' smartphones.The country-club crowd shuffled uneasily when Mr Paul touched on national security.
"The voters were saying that we're tired of people snooping into our private lives.
