[tripzilch]

Yes, actually.

I'm not an American. Which means that I am glad that there's finally some media outrage concerning privacy in general, because it was already public knowledge for months (with no leaks necessary) that the EU agreed the NSA could tap any EU-citizen's data in the US (or under the jurisdiction of).

For some reason this went by without barely a squeak[0].

In fact, a great many transgressions on our privacy (concerning both US and the EU and probably the World) went by without a squeak.

There is enough to be outraged about, even without knowing what this leak exactly entails. The important point is, it has the public's attention. And if the overwhelming majority of people are not okay with unlimited surveillance, isn't that a good thing? As you say, popular support going forward? It's about time, didn't you think?

[0] In the news media. Some organisations definitely took notice and adjusted their dependence on US data storage accordingly.

[sentenza]

By the way, the new EU data protection (i.e., privacy) directive is being written _right now_ and consumer representatives (or activists) report that there is a massive lobbying effort underway to weaken current privacy standards. Given the revelations of recent days, now might be a good time to support those that want a stronger data protection directive.

[tripzilch]

> now might be a good time to support those that want a stronger data protection directive.

I already donate to Bits of Freedom and the Dutch Pirate Party (actually I need to double check the latter) since quite a while, but I'm not sure how that directly helps an EU directive being written right now.

Any ideas? EU stuff is notoriously "far away" and hard to reach or affect (which is the one thing I really dislike about the EU, they silently passed some ridiculous things that would never fly in NL).