

Secret European deals to hand over private data to America - return0
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/29/european-private-data-america

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mindcrime
Since this Snowden story broke, there has been a lot of (justified) criticism
of the US government. And rightly so. But I think anyone - living in the US or
not - would be foolish to think that most (if not all) other world governments
don't do similar things. Especially the more advanced, "first world"
governments. Maybe the government of Botswana or Nicaragua or Kenya doesn't
have such well developed intelligence facilities as those of the USA, but I
expect their governments are spying on people as well.

It's just that this story is particularly galling to Americans since we like
to think that the 4th Amendment to our Constitution provides some measure of
protection against indiscriminate snooping by our government... so finding out
(well, really, _confirming_ ) that they are doing this, points out a hole in
our system.

Other countries may not have the explicit wording in their founding documents
that would seem to protect against this stuff... but then, maybe some do. I'm
not familiar enough with every world government to say. But regardless of what
your nation's charter says, I'd pretty much be willing to be money that they
are doing things in the name of "national security" that you wouldn't approve
of if you knew about them.

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glitchdout
"This article has been taken down pending an investigation."

WHAT?

In any case, here's the google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.gua...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/29/european-
private-data-america)

------
mtgx
When Merkel tried to defend Obama (but not in a completely obvious way), I
realized Germany must be up to no good, too. It reminded me of when Obama made
a speech about Egypt, when the revolution was going on. It was pretty obvious
he didn't want to criticize the leader (the one the people were creating a
revolution against) _too much_ , because they had huge ties with Egypt, and
they supported him a lot in the past (like US does with Saudi Arabia, and
other dictatorships around the world).

Hopefully Merkel loses her position over this at the next election, but I want
her to lose it over _this_ issue, so the ones coming after her know not to
repeat her mistake.

