[mikehuffman]

It is pretty amazing that nearly all of the western first world nations agree on one thing...they are pretty ok with KGB style spying or monitoring of their citizens. It doesn't seem to matter if they are on-the-fence-socialists, outright socialists, or dyed-in-the-wool capitalists.

[DanBC]

And that they cooperate to avoid legal difficulties of spying on your own citizens.

ECHELON was a group of 5 nations. The US couldn't spy on Americans, so the US would give a list of names to the other four nations who would do the spying on those people.

The industrial espionage that happened because of ECHELON is amazing too.

[aqme28]

Really? I'm curious about what countries allow this kind of thing, since I haven't heard of it outside of the US, Britain, Russia, and only a select few other countries. Can you really generalize it to "nearly all western first-world nations"?

[CamperBob]

I've come to think of it in economic terms. Some incredibly valuable companies -- Google and Facebook come to mind -- are built around nothing more than the economics of your personal information and mine. Seemingly innocuous information has proven to have great commercial value, and that's also why the government is so interested in accumulating it. If your preferences, vital statistics, purchases, and opinions were valueless, Google and Facebook wouldn't want to know anything about them, and neither would Uncle Sam.