Firstly, this argument isn't just limited to the US. But what the US does has repercussions for the rest of the world, particularly the UK.

So on that, have people been arrested (and otherwise harassed) for political views in the UK? Yes. There were around 150 known activists tracked and arrested before the Royal Wedding here because they might 'cause a scene'. An incredibly trivial example that highlights perfectly well the type of problem that you have when you create a society with multiple, overlapping and unaccountable layers of surveillance.

There are a number of other examples (Occupy London, UK Uncut, some animal rights groups, anti-fracking groups) where people have been 'pre-emptively' arrested and detained, only for the charges to be dropped months later after restrictive bail conditions were imposed, off the back of surveillance enabled by technology - fake cell tower SIM gathering, facebook monitoring (It's not just limited to 'the internet').

Protest and activism (i.e. 'political views') exist on a spectrum, and the line where that crosses into illegal activity is far further than the police would have you believe, but that does not, and has not, stopped them using those same laws (and tools, and technology) to enforce political (small 'p', and not necessarily governmentally inspired) views of 'proper' behaviour. There are dozens of examples of similar behaviour in the US for the last 30 years. Some are 'on the internet', others are not. Gary Marx's work is a great place to start for those examples. http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/garyhome.html

Tl;dr - yes.

I'm sorry, my point was specificaly about the US which has an almost religious relationship to its right of speech. Something that, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Europe for various historical reasons.

Thanks for the interesting facts about UK though. Although i don't think the internet has changed the nature of any state. Countries that abuse internet surveillance now probably abused phone wiring and police investigation on individuals before.

That's exactly my point, though (and was to the French guy below). Your original point was 'have people in the US been arrested after being wiretapped or spied on over the internet?' Yes.

The argument is always made that they were 'planning/conspiring' a particular act, something that's rarely taken through to prosecution/conviction, it's a well known harassment technique (as was overtly surveilling people with 'undercover' cars and foot patrols) by the FBI and the larger city police departments.

So yes, people have been arrested for expressing their views, which were caught via surveillance, because law enforcement abused the information they had and brought trumped up charges. The UK examples I gave was because I'm more familiar with the stuff here - the US has a great and grimy history of abusing surveillance powers, from Hoover's FBI onwards.

Just because some countries have it more wrong doesn't mean criticisms of US policy are invalid, it's really a silly argument.

Yes it absolutely does.

Qualifying the US as a "surveillance state" ( and not as something-that-could-one-day-become-as-such-if-people-don't-pay-attention) , means you think you have no freedom of speech ( at least on the internet). This is outrageous, not only compared to countries were you can actually be arrested for a tweet, but also because it means you actually have no clue as to what kind of country you live in.

As a young french adult, i tried to protest once against a government law i found revolting, by sitting peacefuly and quietly in front of the Elysee ( the white house equivalent) with a sign. I immediatly got arrested, my ID card was taken for a check, and i was told to move on. I said i found it surprising they did that, and the french policemen told me "well, you've seen people doing that on TV but this isn't the US here".

And yet, i am very able to make the difference between france and china, where people would face actual prison for that. Because i have a god damn sense of proportion.

There isn't an absolutely "free" country. A nation means laws and regulations, it is a compromise. You compromise a little bit on your personnal freedom for the sake of general interest. It's a complex matter, not a binary switch.

So all qualification of a country has to be done in comparison with other countries, facing the same kind of threat, and see how they deal with the situation. If you find a western country that doesn't "spy" the net, just tell me. They do it for child porn, drug traffic, and terrorisms. And to me that's absolutely great, as long as it remains for those purposes.

Freedom of speech and surveillance are very different things. The crucial part of surveillance is that you're being monitored on what you say, fairly routinely. Whether or not the authorities take exception to what you say/who you speak to in private communications is another matter, which qualifies only the nature of the surveillance society, not whether it exists.