Comment by tripzilch
12 years ago
Come on, say it to my face! You don't believe non-US people have a right to privacy. That's me! Your agencies can do whatever they want to me, but not to you.
You're on the public Internet, you're not "within national borders", and everybody can hear what you just said. Say it to my face. Tell me how you feel that it's just fine to violate my privacy, that it's apparently perfectly fine to pry into my life, hack my phone networks, to gather any possible information there is to know about me and all those around me, just because I'm not a US citizen, and you are. You are better and are entitled to these protections, I don't.
> The same holds true, modulo agency name and country, for any other country.
Not every country believes that their citizens are somehow exceptional and non-citizens can be treated however they please.
I think that, in today's world, everyone, particularly public people of interest to other countries, should reasonably expect to have foreign countries gather information about them, up to and including spying.
For example, if I was doing important security research, I would fully expect to have the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, etc, looking into my work.
I don't believe the US is exceptional. I expect other countries to have interests in US citizens and to carry out their interests to advance their national interest.
This expectation is entirely separate from my opinion of the morality of said act.
Every state privileges its own citizens. There are good reasons for doing so that have nothing to do with bigotry or exceptionalism.
Some of us don't consider human rights a "privilege".
If privacy is a human right, it's not (to me, at least) of the same caliber as "life, liberty, and security of person". People behave best because they have internalized social norms, those arguments and attitudes that we proudly expose.
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