[tptacek]

I agree with most of what you're saying, and again, I don't want to be taken to have said "you should go out of your way to use US companies". Also, there are other important concerns! If you don't trust how a US company is going to handle your data --- cough Facebook --- you shouldn't use them, no matter what you think NSA is going to do.

But: the protections I'm talking about aren't rights accorded to non-US persons abroad. I agree, you have very few legal protections against the US as a non-US person in (say) Europe. But the US company itself does have protections. It is not lawful for NSA (or the DOJ or CIA or whatever) to hack into Google's servers; on the flip side, it is probably lawful for NSA to have pre-hacked every major information provider and telecom in Europe, if they really wanted to. My point is, if you're overseas, the largest SIGINT agency in the world doesn't even have to ask to get access.

(Obviously, they don't have to ask in the US if they simply ignore the law, but then, if you ignore the law, none of this matters, and everything is up for grabs).

[Youden]

That's fair, I just wanted to explain why "made outside the US" could be a valid selling point.

Regarding hacking Google and ignoring the law, isn't that essentially what PRISM was? Do we have any reason to believe US intelligence will obey the law now?

I do understand your argument but I think we place different levels of confidence in the US legal system. I have zero confidence, so assign it zero value.

[HDMI_Cable]

I'm not really well-versed on US law, but wouldn't that hacked data not be admissible in court?

[qeternity]

Parallel construction.

Also, NSA investigations are more likely to be resolved with a drone than with prosecution.