I guess you haven't heard:
"The Five Eyes are cooperating with various 3rd Party countries in at least two groups: The "Nine Eyes", consisting of the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway. The "Fourteen Eyes", consisting of the same countries as the Nine Eyes plus Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden.[41] The actual name of this group is SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR) and its purpose is coordinating the exchange of military signals intelligence among its members.[42]
Germany is reportedly interested in moving closer to the inner circle: an internal GCHQ document from 2009 said that the “Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group." Germany may even wish to join Five Eyes.[43] Referring to Five Eyes, French President François Hollande has said that his country is "not within that framework and we don't intend to join."[44] According to a former top U.S. official, "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France – France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that."
But of course. I wasn't denying anything of the sort.
But you see - it's one thing for my country to do it, because if I suffer from it, I have legal ways to fight it. It's another thing entirely for a foreign government with so much power to do it, let alone a government that directly controls and that can subdue the biggest companies that operate on the Internet. Depending on the country, the NSA doesn't have enough jurisdiction or power to subdue a foreign company, regardless of any treaties, therefore depending on the country, I can trust a more local company more than I can trust a US company - since a US company can be quietly subdued to whatever the NSA wants without recourse or without me finding out about it.
And I do realize that if I'm targeted directly, then short of keeping myself offline, there's no way to protect my data. But my biggest fear is that my personal data will end up being processed in bulk by incompetents. My personal ID ended up in a local newspaper by mistake because of incompetents running our governmental institutions (even though that's illegal). I've got important data that I care about - while at the same time I've got nothing to hide - but do I want my personal data, like pictures, love or angry letters, source code of personal projects and so on and so forth to end up being processed by incompetents? Hell no. And if it does happen, I want to be able to strike back.
With the US government doing it, I have no recourse, no path I could take - since I'm not a US citizen and I don't have money for the fees practiced by US lawyers anyway, while at the same time, my voice is not heard because I'm a foreigner. Heck, I don't even have a right to vote, if that counted for something. Can you see my problem here?
That's why I'm of the opinion that the US government should try really hard to fix what they broke, since we all have enjoyed the freedoms provided by the global Internet and it would be a pity if balkanization happens because some idiots thought it would be cool to process the emails of individuals without warrants and in bulk.
Germany is reportedly interested in moving closer to the inner circle: an internal GCHQ document from 2009 said that the “Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group." Germany may even wish to join Five Eyes.[43] Referring to Five Eyes, French President François Hollande has said that his country is "not within that framework and we don't intend to join."[44] According to a former top U.S. official, "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France – France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Eyes#Future_enlargemen...