Quite the contrary actually. The NSA took advantage of new technology, starting under Bush/Cheney, that the law had not yet caught up with and has been all over the world invading the private lives of civilians, in South America, in Europe, Asian and the PEOPLE of these countries are outraged, as we would be, to learn that a foreign government has been spying on their personal phone and email records.
This conversation came up over eight years ago when they caught doing it here and what did Congress do? They changed to law to make their criminal violations, which were acknowledged under that law at the time, retroactively to legalize their crimes.
THIS TIME, they went too far and now what should have happened ten years ago, is finally about to happen. There are discussion of instituting International Laws to stop ALL governments from these kinds of abuses.
If it had not been for Snowden and Greenwald, Der Spiegal, the Guardian and other good journalists, this might have taken even longer to achieve.
We NEED laws and since our own Government has abandoned the rule of law, re Wall St Crooks, War Criminals etc, many of us predicted that it would come from outside the US, which is shame. We should have been the LEADERS on this issues of Civil Rights and Liberties. But that is how far we have fallen as far as Moral Authority goes.
Now several countries, S. America eg, are working on not using any browsers from the US and creating their own internet.
Microsoft and other American corps are losing business all over the world.
This is GOOD for the people, not so good for unethical Corps or the architects of the these policies, Dick Cheney eg. It should have been spearheaded by our Government, instead we are now viewed as the rogues who made it necessary to begin talking about reigning in these people who are violating laws and morals.
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