Last summer, in the wake of leaks from Edward Snowden showing that the National Security Agency had targeted Brazil President Dilma Rousseff, the country publicly lambasted the United States and made the case that companies that do business in Brazil must keep data on Brazilian citizens locally. A corresponding provision would be added to an “Internet bill of rights” and net neutrality bill that had been pending in the Brazilian legislature for years.

However, in a concession to intense lobbying by Google and other major American tech companies, that local storage requirement was dropped from the final language that passed the lower house (Google Translate) of the Brazilian Congress on Tuesday.

The bill, known formally as the “Marco Civil da Internet," does require that Brazilian privacy and data protection law be respected if the foreign company offers services to Brazilians, even if the company does not maintain an economic presence in the South American state. The bill also includes short-term exemptions to net neutrality in the case of “emergency services” or “technical requirements.”

If the bill passes the Brazilian senate and is signed into law, it would make the country the largest ever to enshrine net neutrality in its legal code, following the lead of the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Chile.

But the final form of the legislation may not fully restore trust in foreign service providers. In September 2013, a Brazilian official at the United Nations lamented the role of foreign service providers in the spying against his country. “We have no [similar technological surveillance] capabilities in Brazil,” Guilherme Patriota, the deputy permanent representative at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations, told Ars.

“I think the Snowden revelations have proven me right,” Patriota added. "Google and others are automatically collaborators of the US government and internationally—this happens by US law; it's a law that's made for US application. We are [part of the group of] Western countries friendly with the US, and nevertheless the e-mails of our president are being read by the NSA. There's simply no end to it.”