It's not just that they're stealing everyone's privacy. They're acting like "it's foreigners, so we don't have to care" - even the latests attempts to rein in NSA make no effort to cut back its international misbehavior.
Basically, I think most civilized people have been operating on the premise that democratic western states are behaving in a vaguely civilized way towards people in other such states. But it's clear that America at least is behaving like the purest sociopath, where "friends" just means "easier to manipulate". They are breaking the unspoken international social contract, and it is going to have worse repercussions than they yet understand.
The word 'sociopath' describes these actions very well.
Considering that the United States is in a state of enduring war, and considering that all of the effort to monitor the internet comes from a desire to strengthen national security (which is a vital concern), it makes sense for the United States to behave this way.
After all, what is war other than purely sociopathic behavior? The monitoring of the internet is just an extension of these behaviors which manifest themselves during wartime.
The nature of the war on terror has legitimized this type of behavior. Specifically, the nature of terrorism seems to motivate the United States government to go to great lengths in order to cause damage to an enemy that is largely immune to defeat, for cultural and religious reasons. Drones are a great example of how far they will go.
The use of nuclear bombs signaled the end of world war two. Maybe the Obama administration is hopeful that surveillance of all communication is the final step towards a resolution of this war. That's not legitimate in my eyes, but oh well (i certainly don't know the solution). On top of everything else that has happened, zero expectation of privacy seems to be the equivalent of the nuclear option at this point.
For us foreigners, knowing that America has strong democratic roots, it is obvious (and worrying) that the majority of american citizens actually agree with that.
And yet, the vast majority of US citizens still agrees. I mean, they have the right to bear arms so that when they strongly disagree with their government, they can form an army and overthrow it (or something, whatever that amendment is for). If not that, at the very least they can strongly protest against the decisions and policy made, vote for a third party and break the two-party system, or vote / demand the voting and government system to be upturned to stop having to choose for the lesser or two evils in the form of a single man who will get most of the blame and responsibility for poor governmental decisions.
The problem is Obama needs swing voters, and swing voters tend to vote kneejerk on national security. If he follows his personal values, he'll alienate them. It's a mess.
Well, as a republic, the government is usually about 2 years out of sync with the public: we won't actually get a chance to yell at them until next election.
Taking over? You should probably realize by now that what you see in the media about classified government ops is just the tip of the iceberg.
Considering the inherently insecure nature of computer systems, and the heavy reliance of security mechanisms on trusted authorities, you need to realized that, in fact, you've lost any privacy online a long time ago.
AFAIK, the European parliament is so far reasonable regarding the Internet and privacy.
However, the Commission (the executive branch, and especially the Trade Commisioner, Karel De Gucht) has been pushing hard for ACTA, going as far as lying, several times, to the Parliament. When the Parliament rejected ACTA, De Gucht said he would look for other means to bypass the decision.
I didn't know that. It plugs a hole in the targeted surveillance programs, at the expense of all prepaid users.
The target demographics for prepaid is mostly kids and teens, poor people, and people concerned about their privacy, split between sensitized geeks, unfaithful lovers and criminals.
For the first two demographics cheap monthly plans are now emerging (in France, Free offers two hours of talk and infinite SMS for 2€ per month and unlimited talk, SMS and 3GB of data for 20€ per month).
It sucks for the last three.
On a slightly related topic, in demonstrations, people caught without a cell phone during an ID check often end up arrested for "administrative reasons".
> On a slightly related topic, in demonstrations, people caught without a cell phone during an ID check often end up arrested for "administrative reasons".
So the likely reason for this is so that they can get an accounting of who was there, right? Where are you referring to?
Funny, I just realized that I never think of the UK when reading about Europe. In a surveillance context it certainly feels closer to the US. And then I watched this far to often a couple of years ago ... in a desperate wish to find some humanizing qualities ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdlT7v476qY
you're from latvia? i suspect it seems worse to you at the moment because of the extradition case. and in many ways the uk is as bad (or worse, at least the americans are in trouble for spying on americans) (and they're vaguely european).
Basically, I think most civilized people have been operating on the premise that democratic western states are behaving in a vaguely civilized way towards people in other such states. But it's clear that America at least is behaving like the purest sociopath, where "friends" just means "easier to manipulate". They are breaking the unspoken international social contract, and it is going to have worse repercussions than they yet understand.