
Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us - mh_
https://medium.com/surveillance-state/f77088fd4c28
======
nkoren
The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the
founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do
_not_ derive from government largess. This was the ideal which provided
America's inner light; for all of America's mis-steps, the proclamation of
this core ideal fanned the flames of some sort of tendency towards goodness.

This ideal is all but gone. Today, the American government baldly proclaims
that rights do not belong to human beings, but are conferred only by
citizenship. the starkest example of this remains John Yoo's rationale
(embraced by the Bush administration) for why the Geneva Convention does not
apply to the Taliban: that the rights guaranteed by the Convention were not
_human_ rights, but rights granted to combatants of UN member states. Yoo
argued that human rights did not exist, and that rights derive solely from
citizenship.

To be fair, the roots of that doctrine long preceded the Bush administration,
and have continue to grow since. But when I look at framing of debate about
rights -- and this applies not only to the NSA spying, but also to the outrage
over the fact that the US President would order the drone assassination of,
gasp, _American citizens_ (as opposed to the thousands of other non-combatants
he has killed in the same way) -- when I see this, it becomes clear that the
ideals which inspired the declaration of independence are long since gone.

~~~
tome
> This ideal is all but gone.

Doesn't slavery demonstrate that this ideal never even existed in the first
place?

~~~
crusso
It demonstrated that they had the right ideals but were unable to put them
into practice in one fell swoop. As Lincoln pointed out - the framework of the
Declaration was an ideal to be pursued. The Founders' wisdom in what they put
into motion necessitated the eventual end of slavery.

There's a big difference between moving toward the Declaration as an ideal as
we still were in the time from the Founding until the early 1900s vs
completely running away from those ideals as we have since.

~~~
philwelch
Some of the Founders more than others. While many of them came from the North,
where there were no slaves and slavery was generally unpopular, and some of
the others like Washington and Jefferson held slaves but felt bad about it,
there was a large enough contingent of Southern politicians who just plain
favored slavery and had to be politically negotiated with. If you define "the
Founders" as "everyone who attended the Continental Congresses or the
Constitutional Convention", many of them were idealists, many of them had a
vision, but many others were just ordinary politicians with their own agendas.

This also holds true for all American political history from the founding of
the country to the Civil War.

~~~
jivatmanx
It's also important to remember that this was before the industrial
revolution, when almost the entire economy was agricultural, thus the South
was far more powerful than the north.

The Civil War started right after the industrial revolution ended. By this
time, the balance of power was greatly in favor of the North.

~~~
philwelch
It's also worth pointing out that one of the early products of the industrial
revolution--the cotton gin--made slavery far more cost-effective. It would
have died out by natural economic causes otherwise.

------
UVB-76
I was going to write a comment to this effect on one of the many threads
related to this subject, but figured it would fall on deaf ears.

Americans should not underestimate the damage this scandal has done to the
American 'brand'. Growing up, I was the Americophile of my friends. I loved
American culture, I aspired to live the American dream, I fully intended to
pursue American citizenship later in life.

This is only the latest in a long line of realisations, but my view couldn't
have changed more. I don't even want to visit the US again, let alone pledge
my allegiance to it.

~~~
Roritharr
Without wanting to sound alarmist, but I feel exactly the same way.

I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting there
solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale or
feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore.

I've been on the web for a very long time now, have read all kinds of
chemistry, pyrotechnics and bomb-making newsgroups and websites and
contributed to them.

I've visited a school with over 50% muslim students and lots of my friends are
muslim.

I consider myself close to a maker, loving 3D Printers and Arduinos, Quad-
Copters and the like...

I post my political views openly on Google+ and Facebook and discus it via
Twitter and Mail...

I'm afraid to the extent i'm targeted and what would happen if I tried to
visit the US.

~~~
UVB-76
> I've abandoned my intentions of living in the US, or even just visiting
> there solely because of this scandal. Not because of some deeply hurt morale
> or feeling, but because i simply wouldn't feel safe in the US anymore.

This is more a case of the straw that broke the camel's back for me, but I
consider it a watershed moment nonetheless.

Privacy is a fundamental human right, enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR, and
one that I value dearly. Now it emerges the United States has been willingly
violating my right to privacy for years.

Rather than rectifying the matter, officials are saying it's okay because I'm
not a US citizen — non-citizens obviously aren't entitled to human rights —
and focusing their attention on punishing the person responsible for bringing
this to my attention.

That is unforgivable in my eyes.

------
rmc
That's one thing that has annoyed me about the tech world's outrage and
objections to the PRISM spying lark. They appear outraged that US citizens are
spied on, with the implication that it was ok when non us citizens were spied
on. Do I, a non us citizen, not have a right to privacy?

~~~
jmadsen
You, as a non-US citizen, are not protected by our constitution. Nor am I, a
US citizen, protected from your government.

I have no grounds to "raise outrage" at my government for spying on
foreigners, much as I might disapprove. They don't break any laws when they do
that. Moral rules, yes; disrespect to our friends and allies, yes; laws, no.

When they spy on US citizens, they tear up our Constitution in doing so. The
outrage is less about the spying - although that is obviously very important -
and more about the laws they are breaking.

~~~
arrrg
You are factually wrong.

You, as a US citizen, are most certainly protected from my government by the
German constitution. Not when it comes to all basic rights in the constitution
(only Germans have freedom of movement, freedom of labor and freedom of
association), but most are universal and apply to every person.

The US constitution is out of date and simply wrong on this point. Human
rights are universal and every human has them. Citizenship shouldn’t come into
play. (I really hope that when it comes to freedom of movement, labor and
association the limitation on Germans can also be lifted one day. For now the
pest of nationalism lives on and makes lifting those limitations a practical
impossibility. To me it seems clear that morally it is very wrong to have such
limitations.)

Oh, and by the way, breaking moral rules is a hell of a good reason to raise
outrage. I don’t understand why you seem to think that something being legal
is reason to not be outraged.

~~~
vixen99
Make clear what you mean by 'nationalism' before you use perjorative words
like pest - as if your assertion is axiomatic.

~~~
PavlovsCat
If you have a definition by which it's not a pest, I'd love to hear it,
honestly.

Wikipedia:

 _Nationalism is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves a
voluntary accepted or coercively imposed mode of identification with
individual persons and a nation._

George Orwell:

[http://www.george-orwell.org/Notes_on_Nationalism/0.html](http://www.george-
orwell.org/Notes_on_Nationalism/0.html)

I'd say identifying with anything other than oneself is even bigger a delusion
than identifying with oneself, and since it's so widespread, calling it a pest
is actually polite.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
I totally agree, I have been watching this totally pointless discussion about
domestic spying all over the net. I was going to write about the topic, but
someone did it already. My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population
are so bad in geography that they don't know that they represent only less
than 5% of world population. After all, it seems that only people who are
voting in elections do matter at all. Maybe it would be a good time to vote
with our wallets. It's also really funny how scared Americans are about
Chinese manufactured hardware & backdoors. I just guess it takes a one to know
one. Btw. WatchGuard firewall registration is very revealing, they want to
know way too much about what the firewall is being used for.

~~~
dasil003
> _My conclusion is that at least 95% of US population are so bad in geography
> that they don 't know that they represent only less than 5% of world
> population._

Uh-huh. You've been watching those candid videos where they interview stupid
Americans haven't you? Of course you probably realized that they are always
filmed in heavily populated areas and there is always a cut between every
interview. You know why? Because you can find ignorant people in any crowded
place anywhere in the world. It's just more funny when it's Americans.

~~~
cpursley
I know from experience that Americans in fact, don't know their geography.

Many couldn't find where they lived if you pointed it to them on a map. I had
a neighbor who thought Amsterdam was a city next to Athens, Georgia (US State)
and even after explaining where it was, that it was part of Holland, he asked
me how the Germany trip was when I returned.

And yesterday, the Indian gas station owner was flabbergasted that I knew
about and where his home town was (Goa - relatively well known at least I
thought). He actually asked 'how do you know that' and I wanted to say because
I'm not a zombie.

~~~
lttlrck
I know plenty of people in Europe that would have trouble locating major US
cities on a map, but I wouldn't be so bigoted to say Europeans don't know
geography.

~~~
cpursley
I'm not expecting them to find the city on a map (aside from their own), but
you'd be hard pressed to find a European that didn't know that New York or
L.A. was located in the United States.

~~~
chaz
The tremendous amount of US culture exported by through movies, TV, and sports
makes a lot of American people, places, and things household names around the
world.

------
grey-area
The other dangerous thing about this attitude of, oh, it's only foreigners, is
that GCHQ and other US allies routinely sweep up communications from all over
the world (in the case of GCHQ probably mostly from the US). So if you send
information to Europe from the US, you're being spied upon, and the
information relayed back to the NSA. The same goes for citizens of the UK
subject to NSA spying who have data or contacts in the US. This distinction
between us and them is used to tranquillise dissent in the US even as the NSA
blithely ignores their own rules.

In our increasingly connect world, does it even make sense to define rights
based on where a person lives, or what country they happened to be born in? We
should expect the same basic rights (right to a free trial, right to a free
press, protection from torture) to apply to all people even if citizenship of
a nation confers certain privileges.

~~~
mtgx
What worries me is that their spying "partnerships" are so broad, that NSA
receiving data on Americans from GCHQ, and GCHQ receiving data from NSA, works
effectively as themselves doing the spying in their own country.

So then this argument that "we don't spy on our own people", implying that "we
have no data on our own people" is potentially misleading to the extreme.

Of course, NSA already spies on Americans, but other countries (Canada,
Australia, UK, and others) might not be so "brave", and they could be getting
data about every one of their citizens from NSA, which makes it just as bad as
themselves doing all the spying. So the "legal boundaries" of these spying
agencies are effectively useless.

------
Derbasti
The sad thing is, we don't have international law for these things. Thus, it
is usually easier to ask a foreign intelligence agency if they could spy on a
domestic suspect than to deal with it within the country.

And this hurts so much, because the internet is perceived to not be bound by
countries and borders, while still residing mostly on US soil. But the rules
for spying are most certainly governed by borders; This leads to this weird
asymmetric situation where one particular domestic intelligence agency is able
to collect almost all international data.

What we really would need is citizenship for data. In a way, it does not make
sense that Facebook owns my data. My data should be my own, and thus be
governed by whatever jurisdiction I happen to live in.

Or put differently, one way out of this is to host your own email, backup,
syncing, etc. That way the data is _yours_ , and governed by the same rules as
you. This is what I am doing.

Or maybe, Google should split up into several legal entities that each are
accountable for the data for one country. But clearly, that would just leave
us all flocking to Iceland or the Vatican or something like that...

~~~
TimJRobinson
Some kind of peer to peer encrypted data storage system (think bitcoin for
data) would go a long way towards solving this. You could give sub keys to
sites that want to access some of this data and because it's encrypted,
distributed and peer to peer no one owns it and you control your data.

Yes this would be crazy with todays infrastructure but in 10 - 20 years when
internet is as previlent as electricity and everyone has many terabytes of
space it's definitely viable.

I really hope some smart minds are working on something like this in light of
these revelations.

~~~
uxp
How is this any different than hosting your own federated OpenID service?
Hell, I'm basically doing this already with XMPP, Email and a blog, but not
OpenID because it's not as prevalent as it could be. This is already a solved
problem that doesn't take terabytes of storage space. Though, like any common
service or protocol, it could be more secure.

------
dbuxton
I went to this expecting to find a slightly puzzled reaction along the lines
of, "even given the leaked surveillance, we all know that our own governments
are doing similar stuff to us all the time and that we are protected neither
by law nor by convention against it".

I know that's a bit of an overstatement but it's particularly amusing to see
Snowden sheltered by two of the world's most enthusiastic users of
surveillance, namely Russia and China.

FWIW I'm in the UK, where we're a lot luckier than most in terms of
accountability, oversight and convention, but don't have an explicit
constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. That said,
it often bemuses people in Europe to look at the US and see almost no
protection for what we understand as a basic right of "privacy".

~~~
markdown
Don't you folks get watched by big brother everywhere you go? Isn't London the
CCTV capital of the world?

------
obviouslygreen
This outrage at American reactions is terribly hypocritical. Yes, people --
regardless of nationality -- _should_ be upset when they realize their privacy
is being grossly violated without cause, by _any_ government.

However, people seem to think Americans should be more concerned about _other
people 's rights_ than their own, when the real problem is the violation of
_everyone 's_ rights. Despite this, all anyone is really interested is _their
own rights_ , which is quite obvious considering the central complaint here is
that Americans are wrapped up in themselves while the rest of the world has
the same issue. How is that rational? Your rights are being violated, and
that's supposed to matter _to me_ more than the fact that _my_ rights are
being violated by _my government_ in the same way? Yes, it's selfish, but it's
also self-preservation. If people don't stand up for themselves when they need
to, they will not be around to stand up for anyone else later.

Many of us wring our hands at the various European financial crises; many of
us worry about North Korea's potential to harm its neighbors; many of us
anxiously watch for improvement in Middle Eastern politics. But just like
anyone else, when we find out things _where we live_ are worse than we
thought, we look inwards to our own problems; that they effect others is
terrible, but it's irrational and unreasonable to expect that to be our
primary motivation.

~~~
Joeri
This is the heart of the matter: the nation state is an unfit instrument in a
globalized economy. We need to move towards a one-nation planet with equal
protection under the law for all human beings, as well as equal obligations.

I'm just not sure how the voting system should work, because current voting
systems mostly produce poor results.

I am reminded of Childhood's End where humanity is forced to grow up under
alien guidance. Somehow we need to figure out a way to grow up as a species in
a similar way.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Your utopia would have a single point of failure. What if the one government
gets corrupted? We could not even draw comparisons.

------
nnq
Nothing will change until _all_ Americans get it once and for all that the
attitude of being _at war with the world and planning to win at all cost_ is
actually _opposite_ to _being competitive and fighting hard to be the best in
the world._

We the foreigners that buy into the american dream always think of the latter
as the "american attitude" whereas US gov and corporations always go for the
first. And they only coincide in very restricted contexts, basically in fewer
and fewer contexts as the world changes and becomes more homogeneous. To "win
the war" when you're well above everyone else tends to equate to playing fair
most of the time, you just use what you have and what you have is always
better so you always win, but when the economical and cultural ground levels,
if your goal is still to "win the war", you end up playing dirty and
forgetting about human rights and values.

...the USA's attitude will only change when they wake tf up and realize that
_there is now war_ to be won, it's just about competing in a healthy "jungle".
The current US gov's attitude to everything seems to us foreigners similar to
your classical story of the PTSDd Vietnam war veteran that gets home after the
war and keeps fighting imaginary wars, butchering his family and blowing up
the neighborhood in the process, just because that's all he's good at.

------
drawkbox
Yes but this is happening in other countries for both citizens and non-
citizens, it is naive to think otherwise. Just as it was for Americans after
9/11, and even before. If there is lack of backbone on the people to stop it
and they allow giving up rights with no fight or questioning it, it will
continue. It is not distinct to the US, this is happening everywhere.

Now we know factually (previously assumed) that it happens in the US as well,
I think most people here in the US are just surprised it is also happening to
them. That was the last place people assumed privacy, as a citizen. You'd
expect intel agencies in every country to gather as much information as
possible unless the people of that country object loud enough, I am not for it
at all but it is the new game.

I am sure this is also happening at gov't levels all over the world in
addition to private companies. Business ideas and data stolen everyday, gov't
intelligence agencies sifting right off the lines.

The age of digital privacy just seems to be over sadly, too many technology
tools to not abuse out there. Changing it will be difficult, encryption
doesn't even help. Personal servers, computers etc are the easiest thing to
get into. The only real protection would be at the service/cloud level and
having stronger security/monitoring like financial + trading markets have. But
then you have the situation where gov't intel agencies just go to them to gain
access. Not even sure how to change it. Explicit protections in the
Constitution are footnoted away with executive orders and fear based
legislation.

The permanent record your teachers used to warn you about, that exists now for
real.

------
znowi
I see a lot of disillusion in Europe about the US. It's been going since the
Iraq, but now it's a real wake up call. What's more alarming, it's slipping
into anger and open opposition. This is not the _change_ we've been
anticipating.

Americans are in a tricky situation now. Who do you elect at this point to
make things right? Does it even work? I think we've reached a major milestone
here. I'm both frightened and curious as to what will happen. I believe what
we do now will define our lives for decades to come.

~~~
kevin_p
I think the article isn't really about elected representatives, it's about the
attitudes of ordinary Americans. Like the author and many other pro-American
Europeans, I've been pretty disillusioned by the recent reaction to PRISM.
Like drone assassination before it, most Americans aren't saying "how dare our
government do this" but "how dare our government do this TO US CITIZENS".

(I'm not talking about spying on political leaders, the military etc -
everyone does that to everyone else. But it seems that most Americans think
it's perfectly fine to invade the privacy of ordinary people on a massive
scale, just as long as those people don't hold a US passport.)

------
TimJRobinson
As an Australian this is exactly how I feel. Over the past few weeks I've been
moving many of my business systems off the cloud and onto self hosted servers
and using less and less American servers because they clearly have no issue
with taking foreigners information and with tens of thousands of contractors
and employees able to access that information I wonder how long it's going be
before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having
a 'friend' with access to prism.

~~~
giardini
"I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively
spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism."

How long? I think this has been happening for some time now. There's no
mechanism for watching the watchers. Furthermore as software developers we
know that there's always an unaudited path to the data and people _will_
access it for their own benefit.

Bloomberg had access to how Goldman-Sachs uses Bloomberg's terminals so
Bloomberg employees took advantage. The NSA can see Bloomberg, Goldman-Sachs
and every financial firms' queries and transactions, all telephone calls and
all e-mails, all internet surfing (for starters), where they eat lunch and
what road they drive home on. NSA employees will be tempted (or possibly
allowed or even encouraged) to take advantage.

And what better way to get money to pay for unauthorized or secret black
operations? There may be much happening right now that is completely
unauthorized (even by NSA) and completely out of the purview of those who
supposedly are in charge.

We may never, ever see the size of this iceberg. It could be spawning sizable
financially autonomous mini-icebergs that continue to function even after this
one has been melted down. This is a fscking nightmare scenario.

------
ExpiredLink
> we all bought into the dream..

The American dream didn't even work out for most US citizens. Merely the upper
class. The rest of the world bought into practical consumerism more than into
a diffuse dream.

~~~
hartator
Is the european model better? I will trade my european passport for the US one
anytime.

But, sure, I also feel there is two kind of people, and if you are not an US
citizen, you are screwed.

~~~
lispm
There is an european passport?

~~~
hartator
Basically, on your passport, you have both "european union" and the name of
the issuing country.

------
kenbellows
Just to put it out there, while I agree that the sheer volume of snooping
being performed by the NSA, why is it a surprise to anyone, anywhere, that any
government is snooping on as much foreign traffic as they can? This is, and
has pretty much always been, standard operating procedure for every major
intelligence agency in the world.

------
Yver
What hurts me is that people are acting surprised that spy agencies are spying
on people. Their job is to collect intelligence. If they _can_ read your
emails, they will.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies)

~~~
dreamfactory
Their job most certainly isn't mass surveillance of civilian populations. If
they thought it was, they need to be disbanded.

------
stormbrew
Interestingly, it seems as if a lot of my fellow Canadians are pacified by
this line of thinking, perhaps not realizing that they're fair game.

------
bobbydavid
Practically speaking, context matters in privacy. For instance, if a person
invades my privacy to learn my sexual orientation, I would feel violated. But
if that person was my boss, I would feel much more violated.

For an American like myself, domestic spying is scary for the same reason. The
US government is my local government. They run our children's schools. They
make me send in reams of silly tax documents. They make me wait in line at the
DMV. They patrol the streets of my neighborhood with guns. When I call 911
(the emergency number), it's the US government who answers. In short, the US
government -- my government -- is in a great position to abuse the knowledge
gained from spying. It's this immediacy that heightens fear of domestic
spying.

Another thing to note is that there is a subtle but important distinction for
Americans between the CIA and the FBI. The connotative equivalent of the FBI
is the police and the connotative equivalent of the CIA is the army. Thus,
watching the CIA spy on Americans feels ominous and sinister. It's the spying
equivalent of martial law.

What Americans don't realize, I think, is that for foreigners it is an issue
of respect. That is, the underlying context of domestic spying outrage is that
US citizens were _not_ outraged by foreign spying; that it's perfectly
acceptable to spy on the foreigners as long as we protect our own privacy.

In the end, privacy is about perception. To those who, like me, feel their
privacy is being violated, please continue to make your feelings heard, both
inside and outside the US. The more voices (especially tenacious ones) the
better.

------
tehwalrus
The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my
(rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need _one
legal system_ for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world
government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that
governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an
international court system. I've blogged about this before[1], although I
intend to rewrite much of what's on that old site since I don't think it's
communicated very well.

I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by
one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a
while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so
that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it
lasted, but I'm now going to _have_ to start taking my skepticism of US law
seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can.

[1]
[http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/](http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/)

~~~
harryf
A legal system as only as good as those who control it.

One way to define what the law is, is that it's the will of the strong imposed
upon the weak. In the Middle Ages for example the "strong" were barons who
imposed laws upon the peasants through their men-at-arms.

Today we have various competing legal systems fighting either for global
control or defending their local "sovereignty". When we reach the point of one
global legal system, we will have found a winner.

~~~
popee
> A legal system as only as good ad those who control it.

Bingo!

------
bsaul
Funny how citizenship seems to be a thing of the past to many people. Another
weird side effect of globalization...

~~~
brador
Many people now feel patriotic to ideals than imaginary lines drawn thousands
of years ago. It's an interesting shift, and in some ways was started by the
US having a constitution (set of ideals) as it's foundation rather than a
particular leader, king, or ruler.

~~~
anon1385
Nationalism is a relatively modern phenomenon. The founding of the US was part
of the rise of Nationalism. The idea that your nation (I assume you are
american?) represents 'higher ideals' than others is rather nationalistic
don't you think?

From wikipedia:

 _With the emergence of a public sphere and integrated economy in the 18th
century, a broader sense of identification with one 's country began to
permeate society. In England, the early emergence of a patriotic nationalism
can be traced to the period 1740-1790 and was spurred on by many of the
writers and leading intellectuals of the day. Many symbols of national
identity became widespread, such as the Union Flag being increasingly adopted
as a national flag, the composition of patriotic songs such as Rule,
Britannia! and the creation of John Bull as the personification of Britain by
John Arbuthnot._

 _The movement intensified and became overtly political with the late-18th
century American Revolution and French Revolution; specifically the ultra-
nationalist party in France during the French Revolution_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism#History)

~~~
nraynaud
I have a candid question then: what did drive the mess of wars in Europe
before that? Germany, Switzerland and Italy were a mess of little independent
territories fighting each other. I don't think all of those wars where based
on religious grounds.

~~~
sampo
I am afraid anon1385's text puts the 200-300 year old rise of nationalism in a
wrong light.

Before that nationalism, people were not global citizens, quite opposite:
their circle of life was even smaller (in a geographic sense). Cities, city-
states and small kingdoms. England alone was a patchwork of small quarreling
kingdoms (
[http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/pics/heptarchy.gif](http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/pics/heptarchy.gif)
).

So the rise of nationalism widened people's perspective, it was a step towards
larger geographical areas being united and living in peace within themselves.

So the nationalism was progress. Maybe Germans started to fight wars against
the French. But at least now you have countries and larger scale organization,
not just a patchwork cities and city-states and local warlords fighting their
local neighbours.

~~~
vidarh
You're skipping about 1000 years of history there to make your point. By the
time of the rise of nationalism, many parts of Europe had shifted back and
forth in control between larger empires for hundreds of years, and it mostly
was not a continent of tiny little city states and small kingdoms any longer.
The era of the city states started fading quickly after the renaissance, and
were in the first place mostly limited to small parts of Europe - most of
Europe had seen ongoing consolidation of smaller kingdoms for a millennia or
two by the time nationalism became a factor.

See this map from 1713, for example:
[http://victoriavane.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/western_euro...](http://victoriavane.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/western_europe_utrecht_treaty.jpg)

Even of the smaller states, many were parts of larger empires for most of
their existence, though the control might shift back and forth between
empires.

E.g. Germany did not exist as a united country, sure, but the Holy Roman
Empire (not to be confused with the Roman Empire) encompassed most of the
smaller countries on the territories of present day Germany and at various
times part of Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, France, Switzerland,
Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Czech Republic. Even within the Holy Roman Empire,
many of the constituent states were at various times larger than their
succeeding present day European states (though there were also many smaller
states).

Nationalism in many instances erected substantial new borders in Europe in
places where borders meant little to ordinary people before.

~~~
alephnil
> You're skipping about 1000 years of history there to make your point.

This varied by area. Some nation states developed early (England, France,
Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland), while other areas was
dominated by city states much longer, like Italy and Germany that did not
become a nation states before around 1870.

~~~
vidarh
Not really

For the most part these countries were monarchies whose territories waxed and
waned with the power of their ruling houses, where the idea of a nation with a
specific government did not develop much earlier than elsewhere. Their
development into nation states in fact largely happened as they contracted
into core territories with common cultures and languages and the power of
their monarchs was put under increasing challenge.

As for Germany and Italy, while they did not become nation states until late
in the game, a large part of that was that they were part of empires and other
kingdoms long before.

The Holy Roman Empire (not to be confused with the Roman Empire), the West
Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic Kingdom ("heir" to the West Roman Empire,
including Italy), the Frankish (Carolingian) Empire, the Bysantine Empire
(East Roman Empire); Habsburg Spain; Habsburg Austria; the original Roman
Empire.

The period of scattered small autonomous city states was a historical "blip"
of not much more than two hundred years due to a temporary political and
military vacuum caused by the constant tug of war of various of these larger
empires.

The core areas of Germany and Italy had been dominated by organized larger
scale governments for the most part of the preceding two millenias (depending
on region) before nationalism existed.

------
mosselman
Why so black and white? US vs the rest? I don't care about what government
says or does something, I care about what people do to each other, because in
the end we are all people. It is not ok for a group of people to take it upon
themselves to hurts everybody's privacy like has been done now. We'd have to
stop whoever is doing this.

------
mahmud
Ugh! I cringed reading that.

 _We wear blue jeans, drink Coke & eat McDonalds. We favor American companies
(hands down) when we make purchases_

Well, thanks, but as an American I'd rather if people didn't have this
subservient attachment to the U.S.

~~~
disbelief
Yeah, the article could have done without that part and still stood upon its
core argument. I think the author intended to start out with a little flattery
to soften the blow, but it just comes across as patronizing and/or a bit
outdated.

~~~
jopt
My sentiment exactly. I cringed at the thought of an argument based entirely
on that. The last part, however

> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He
> asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on
> “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all..

redeemed the views to me.

------
belorn
> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He
> asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on
> “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all..

Maybe we should just create the "terrorist party", as in, we are all terrorist
in the eyes of the US, so we might just have to get comfortable with the
label.

------
cpursley
I'd argue that there are several countries that are more free than the United
States in both terms of social issues and economics that make better role
models.

This might all be 'news' to the tech community - but Libertarian circles have
been talking about this trend towards totalitarianism since what, the 70s? It
might feel like it all started after 9/11, but this framework has been
building up for decades. In fact, it's the natural trajectory to unopposed
empire.

The only thing I hope is that foreign nations accept us liberty loving
Americans into their arms when the expatriation wave begins and are able to
distinguish us from the assholes. It's coming - just look at the uptick in
expatriation: www.nestmann.com/expatriation-statistics There's even
publications dedicated to this like www.sovereignman.com and
www.escapefromamerica.com/about

~~~
jcromartie
Which countries would those be? I'm really on the fence at the moment, between
becoming active in trying to change politics for the better, or just packing
up and going somewhere that doesn't spy on literally everybody and throw you
in jail over a stupid joke or rap song on facebook.

~~~
cpursley
Well, it depends on your political preference. Strong social liberty or strong
economic liberty or something in between? It depends on what's important to
you.

Economic Freedom:
[http://www.heritage.org/index/](http://www.heritage.org/index/)

Democracy Index:
[https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_d...](https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034)

Human Development Index:
[http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Tre...](http://hdr.undp.org/hdr4press/press/outreach/figures/HDI_Trends_2013.pdf)

Gun Freedom:
[http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html](http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html)

Press Freedom: [http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-
index-2013,1054.html](http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html)

Drug Freedom:
[http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html](http://www.freeexistence.org/drugindex.html)

Various other stats:
[http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx](http://www.eiu.com/default.aspx)

Just notice the trends - which countries are you seeing at the tops of most of
the lists?

~~~
vacri
It's curious that you mention libertarianism in your first comment, but the
leaders in most of those lists are the social democracies.

~~~
cpursley
Just providing options. Personally, I'm skewed towards economic freedom.

~~~
vacri
Sure, though there are plenty of small government countries out there that
aren't hell-holes (eg Vanuatu). It's just that social democracy is really
quite philosophically different to libertarianism - the underlying ethos being
'everyone gets support' instead of 'every man for himself'.

------
freshhawk
Perhaps it's because I'm Canadian and have lived in a world of "constantly
aware of US politics but not governed by them" but I find the attitude the OP
is now discarding to be superbly and painfully naive. Basically delusional.
Imagine the feeling you would get when someone tells you "I entered by credit
card number in that 'check if your credit card has been stolen' banner ad and
it said I was safe, so that's good news". Same feeling.

So while I'm glad the realization has been had, and the childish notion has
been discarded, I'm really worried that this is some kind of common idea among
educated non-Americans. Is the ability to read newspapers or follow politics
(actual politics, not the circus of party politics) of any kind in that much
of a decline?

------
juanre
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Woody Guthrie:

[...]

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil

And be called by no name except "deportees"?

This is some time after 1948. Then, just as now, there were people who saw
non-citizens as barely humans, in the US and everywhere else. But then there
was Woody Guthrie as well, and the many people like him who saw the human in
the foreigner.

What has changed in recent years is the reach of the mightiest power, and
sheer number of people who find ourselves in the wrong end of its struggle for
control.

------
throwit1979
This is going to be a little inflammatory but it's true.

Why I will never take seriously foreigners' reactions to our wars,
surveillance, human rights violations, etc:

You people, and the governments and central banks who represent you, keep
buying our debt and financing all of this. The US Government would be
incapable of funding these programs and wars at low cost without YOU stepping
up to the plate _every single auction_ to buy up our treasuries at
ridiculously low yields.

I'll believe your outrage when I see action behind it.

~~~
throwit1979
Either I'm wrong, or reality is unpopular on HN. It doesn't take much to
google for the TIC data[1]. You really do finance this stuff. Average net
purchases represent nearly 30% of the US Government's budget. The USG would
have to curtail its programs by about this much if you didn't consistently buy
our toilet paper.

[1] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
center/ti...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
center/tic/Documents/tressect.txt)

------
pasbesoin
Many in "our" community assign a fair amount of credence to the statement:
Information is power.

We see the trend. A... -- I seldom haul out this word, but I will now -- "neo-
Fascist" [1] regime absorbing a potentially exponential increase in
information while seeking to increasingly restrict our access to and control
over same.

That is, I think, in good part what it boils down to.

------
alanning
Foreign citizens have a very powerful ally when being spied on by the U.S.
government: your own government. When the U.S. government is spying on its own
citizens, who do we have to turn to?

------
dusanbab
Brilliant and succinctly put!

