Oh I guess then it's safe to put my data on the American cloud again.
Just kidding, wouldn't do it. And neither should you.
It's sad, but as a foreigner I don't see that, regarding government policies, anything at all has changed since Snowden went public. I have nothing against the USA taking various leadership roles. Biggest democracy, newest technology etc, but since early 2000s it seems they are doing a bad job in many areas.
What would make you think that foreign governments would be any better? Supposedly privacy friendly European governments engage in plenty of wiretapping[1][2][3]. What I find different about what happens in the US is that these events are highly publicized, scrutinized, and court battles over wiretapping are extremely expensive for the US government, compared to other countries. I don't see that happening elsewhere.
My understanding is that, as a non US-citizen, I'd be generally considered 'fair game' for a lot of blanket surveillance that would not be applied to Americans. Maybe this is what scrrr is referring to? [Edit: I see this is what harkyns_castle alludes to as well.]
Because there's a significant difference in influence I can assert to MY governmnet and a FOREIGN (which includes US) government.
Consider just a lot of US surveillance laws: we non-US citizens might as well be animals for the rights we have. Significantly different than what our own local/EU privacy laws award us.
Also it is significantly easier to take legal action againsy my own government agencies than US ones.
Oops. CA not CN, CA is the postcode for California and the TLD for Canada. Good to see some pressure applied to the NZ gov but I think Dotcom muddles things.
May be that foreign governments aren't any better (but I bet that no EU government spend as much money as the USA in wiretapping), but if you're not an US citizen (and so no warranties are valid for you) I think it's better to have your data in a jurisdiction where you can defend yourself in court, if the need arises.
The difference between "other countries" and the US is that the US puts up a show of "human rights", "scrutiny", and "court battles" in order to show that they "care", whereas the other ones just do not bother.
Where are the results? Better yet, public scrutiny? Everything's a fucking national secret.
Foreign governments are certainly no better. However the government in the USA is certainly more capable and perhaps more motivated than most to act on the information it receives.
There is also familiarity with the government carrying out the surveillance to be taken into account. For most European countries, particularly the one that have been members of the EU for some time there is quite good rule of law and so the consequences of being monitored are potentially less severe. Looking at governments with lots of resources to spare or ones without a good rule of law then surveillance is likely to make people more nervous - which is exactly the intent.
You can't proselytize a rational worldview to irrational people.
The likely reality is that the U.S. has a lesser desire than most other governments to suppress liberty, privacy, and free expression, but their capability is so much greater in magnitude than the others that they end up being the worst offender in the world anyway.
So you can't just say that "every government is bad." Some have worse motives than others, and some are more competent than others. As a result, citizens of governments who are only in it for the bribes and mistresses and are otherwise somewhat bumbling incompetents (and I'm not naming names here), are likely safer than citizens of governments who believe they have a mission from God to be the sword and shield of the righteous, and hire thousands of the smartest people in the world to carry that mission out.
The point being that yes, all governments are a nonzero threat to all people, but severity equals risk multiplied by impact. You really have to address the shit that the U.S., Russia, and China are doing to the global network first.
> bumbling incompetents (and I'm not naming names here), are likely safer than citizens of governments who believe they have a mission from God to be the sword and shield of the righteous, and hire thousands of the smartest people in the world to carry that mission out
Yes bumbling Europeans are less dangerous but only because they have outsourced their intelligence to the US. China and Russia are more dangerous but only to their own population.
If a national spy agency had a rule against spying on non-citizens, it would not be much of a spying agency, would it? Additionally, outside of specific treaties, why should one country have certain obligations to other countries' citizens?
Of course no country has such an obligation per se. But if your government constantly attacks my infrastructure, why oh why should I even consider paying a penny for your service? Given that many American companies still market to users outside the US, this nevertheless seems to be the overall expectation.
It is not about spying or not spying, it is about spying on legitimate targets. All countries (should) have obligations to basic human rights. If I were a head of state, I would expect the U.S. to attempt to spy on me (and I would expect my country to stop them). As an private individual, I very much have the same rights under the U.S. constitution as do U.S. citizens. It is not OK to violate my right to to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. They should have to get a warrant to spy on me, just as they (should) have to do for an American.
Quite right, it'd be a terrible spy agency with those restrictions. I have no issue with warranted investigations, or prosecuting people doing bad things.
I'm arguing that broad, warrantless surveillance is a horrible, chilling thing to be doing. The fact that everyone is doing it doesn't make me feel better.
I've been constantly surprised about how little scrutiny that kind of statement has received in the media - American or otherwise. I thought it would've publicly raised more hackles here in New Zealand (but I guess we all ultimately just feel powerless in the face of such determined surveillance might).
Same thing in Australia, its surprised me also it's not picked up on more. But after the likes of George Brandis' comments (essentially that Snowden was a crook yada yada), I'm starting to not be surprised. The other thing which I find depressing are comments along the lines of "Oh, everyone is doing it, its fine". I don't see that, I think its a damn scummy thing to be doing.
>In particular I find the constant harking back to "Well, we don't spy on US citizens, only everyone else." particularly annoying.
It is annoying, but there is a reason why it is being said. Laws (are supposed to) prohibit (more or less) the US spying on its own citizens without cause. It is written into the constitution (more or less). Foreigners don't have that protection under law. Whether that should be changed or not is a different question than are these programs legal under current laws.
Sorry to nitpick and slightly OT, but more people voted in the elections in India these past weeks than the US has citizens. A staggering half billion plus.
You mean "cloud" all by itself. Don't let the current focus on the NSA fool you into believing that other countries aren't taking low hanging fruit like "your data on a remote server" for their intelligence.
I'd like to hope there are some governments out there without that kind of mentality. Even if not, most countries wouldn't or couldn't be pumping in this kind of cash [1] to broad-spectrum warrantless hoovering. I imagine it'd be a lot more than the below figures too if you take into account contractors and creative accounting.
To say its all about 'terrorism' is laughable, and I wonder just how many trade deals etc have fallen foul of this, or how many people manipulated into doing what the likes of George Bush wanted. How could you trust doing business with someone in the US after these revelations? Just blatant lies all over the place, from the top echelons down. They've made it to the point where if you wanted to develop something you don't want them to grab, it means an air-gapped workstation. That probably doesn't have much mileage either.
It wouldn't matter if there were governments that wouldn't spy on you. That you don't put your data on a server in the US isn't going to stop the NSA, that you didn't put it in the UK isn't going to stop GCHQ, and so on.
This idea that you just put your data in Europe and it's safer is just laughable. The treat is pervasive, it is intelligence agencies working together all around the world. It doesn't stop at any national border.
> top echelons down
I can't tell if you're being humourous or not, but the Snowden releases weren't really new information, they were proof of what information that had leaked out over the past decades.
Everyone does it. The US gov treats it own stuff the same way, air gapping sensitive information and operating a national scale private internet.
The issue in my mind is that we are literally at war with individuals, and we focus on the symptoms instead of root causes. We have been assassinating, subverting, bribing and observing individual enemies of the state for over a decade.
Has doing this done anything to make us safer, as in how we felt in the 80s before international terrorism?
That is my problem with the debate. While some people DO get up in arms about the U.S. government's activities, it is always phrased in such a way as, "You can't do this to American citizens!" What about non-citizens? What happened to "All [people] are created equal?"
> While some people DO get up in arms about the U.S. government's activities, it is always phrased in such a way as, "You can't do this to American citizens!" What about non-citizens?
Non-citizens, presumably, can set up their own governments to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity -- but they aren't the people for whom the people of the United States ordained and established the Constitution of the United States to secure the blessings of liberty.
> What happened to "All [people] are created equal?"
All may be created equal, but the United States government wasn't created to serve all.
That's not to say there aren't limitations on the powers that the US government should apply against non-citizens, but from the very beginning citizens and non-citizens have been by design situated differently with respect to the US government.
Oh I guess then it's safe to put my data on the American cloud again.
Just kidding, wouldn't do it. And neither should you.
It's sad, but as a foreigner I don't see that, regarding government policies, anything at all has changed since Snowden went public. I have nothing against the USA taking various leadership roles. Biggest democracy, newest technology etc, but since early 2000s it seems they are doing a bad job in many areas.
No thanks.