> "[US political system] which is regarded as the best example of democracy, globally"
As far as I can tell, Switzerland has the best political system (with the most direct democracy) and it's really a shame that nobody seems to want to imitate it (which of course can be explained by the fact that it means more power goes to the People, not corporations/secret gvt agencies/etc, which are often allowed to buy politicians via "donations", accepted corruption called "lobbying", etc)
> Germans are especially sensitive about snooping due to their experiences in the Nazi era and in Communist East Germany, when the Stasi secret police built up a massive surveillance network.
I find it curious how this comment seems to appear often in NSA related articles. As if Germans had a degree of sensitivity (with regards to privacy) that's exaggerated. Makes no sense.
But the trend I see is companies telling us to regularly buy stuff we really don't need (and obviously throw away our "old" solutions). The world has way more pressing issues than yet-another-gadget. And the planet's resources are not unlimited.
> David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law
Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that was talked about maybe once in every 5 years. Nowadays, you can't read the news 1 single day without something being labeled "terrorism". Yesterday, it was the Ukrainian gov't calling the people in the tents "terrorists".
It's "funny" how our western system hypocritically decries censorship in China, North Korea et al. when we do the exact same thing, just in a little bit more hidden/less detectable way.
> does that mean they'll at least start getting rid of the us bases?
It doesn't talk about that. And I doubt it's going to happen b/c literally nobody of the current European politicians has the balls to piss off the US (as for France, Obama has declared their president to be the new lap dog, recently, calling it another "special relationship" and saying he couldn't choose between the UK and France, would he be asked to). It's really a freak show nowadays.
Unfortunately, this is not about fighting mass surveillance, at all. This is just about defending against US spying.
Mass surveillance and spying are NOT the same. Spying is/was a targeted measure and will probably always exist, but mass surveillance targets every single citizen and therefor means "Death to democracy", even if you won't feel it, because it happens gradually and behind-the-scenes ("unfortunate events" will happen more often and we will not know why, how and who).
EDIT: And don't count on ANY government to do anything significant about mass surveillance. Every govt wants it, because it simply means "power over the people". Nothing will happen without an immense pressure from the citizen and consumer. Besides voting, we have a "purchasing power" and we should start using it.
> Absolutely terrible that Apple are guilty for making this situation even worse
That's what their mission is: Sell as much as possible. (That's the very "clever" idea our economic system is built on.)
You're not supposed to keep your stuff for a long time, you're supposed to buy a new one every 1 or 2 years.
(The fact that the First World is burning trough several planet Earths on its own (resource-wise) is not of the concern of business leaders of our generation/time, they won't be here anymore when brown stuff really hits the fan.)
Then you should start rebuilding the political system which defines DC. Corporations literally ARE the government, nowadays. (It was given the name "lobbying", but is nothing other than corruption that's apparently accepted by the voter/citizen.)
> "If it was so important why didn't Google get involved?"
Maybe because participating also means "telling people that they're constantly being monitored" (and further raising the perceived seriousness of the issue). And maybe the only solution to escape the madness is to simply drop big parts of the currently available technology.
Apple/Google/Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL/etc are after your money, they only protect your rights if it means "more money", not if it threatens to impact their profit.
So they have no ($$$) incentive to raise the issue. (Our culture is still immature, it favors money over ethical values.)
Everybody's (rightfully) complaining about mass surveillance and what do apparently all web devs do (the people who actually understand tech and know what all this means)? They include endless scripts and background requests (which of course track everybody) to CDNs and whatnot in every single website, instead of simply hosting their stuff themselves and using http://piwik.org/ to get their user stats.
As far as I can tell, Switzerland has the best political system (with the most direct democracy) and it's really a shame that nobody seems to want to imitate it (which of course can be explained by the fact that it means more power goes to the People, not corporations/secret gvt agencies/etc, which are often allowed to buy politicians via "donations", accepted corruption called "lobbying", etc)