If your threat model includes NSA you need to reconsider lot more than just a VPN

Disk encryption, firmware lockdown, home security with notifications, burner phones, Tails and Tor (via VPN), IRC, fleet of hacked Windows machines to route through, 10 online identities.

Windows Defender oughta do it /s

I always recommend users to pick a VPN service in a country not on friendly terms with domestic agencies. Sure, that country gets your data but have a harder time correlating it with anything.

In my circle, VPN use starts to be requested by non-technical users that just want to minimize their digital footprint.

Seems amazing to me, since people spend 200$+ on a service for a year, so it seems rather important to them.

No reason not to use globalization to your own advantage.

A foreign provide surely has more, in the legal realm, than a domestic one?

What legal protection from the NSA does a foreign (to the USA) provider have? Signals intelligence from foreign sources is the NSA's exact mission.

At least the NSA has a purported requirement not to do domestic spying, even if Snowden proved that's not being followed.

I was thinking that a domestic entity has no protections from the NSA, they have to open up if NSA says so "for national security reasons"? Whilst a foreign entity has not requirements to do so. Both domestic and foreign entities are subject to the same practical abilities; ergo a foreign entity is safer?

As for "no domestic spying", I thought the five-eyes group spied on each other to order so as to circumvent those requirements in domestic law??