Then why have US tech companies like Facebook taken so much flack in the past year for privacy issues? The fact that that has been the case, contradicts your underlying point. Further, on a personal level it likely depends on where you're located.

As an American, it matters to me whether the company doing the spying is located in California or Russia. If you're Russian, you might particularly care if the company in question is in California instead of Russia.

Russia is a hyper regressive, anti liberal, anti democratic, low human rights, dictatorship. My interests are particularly not served by allowing companies from Russia to spy on me.

> Russia is a hyper regressive, anti liberal, anti democratic, low human rights, dictatorship. My interests are particularly not served by allowing companies from Russia to spy on me.

Russia is also on the other side of the globe, has a GDP that is less than Italy (despite having way more people and land), and is, essentially, irrelevant outside of online trolling and Agi-Prop.

Meanwhile the person who is going to kick down my door is a US citizen, as is the person who is going to vote to take away my healthcare.

if Russia is so irrelevant, what's with all this hysteria about Trump colluding with Russians?

Because if the centrists in the Democratic party divert to Russian collusion, they don't have to take the long hard look in the mirror wrt to why they lost in 2016.

Because they got caught up in this last Red Scare. No outrage after Snowden leaks, no outrage for Google. It has nothing to do with privacy. It has to do with Russia.

But anyway, Russia can't hurt me as much as the US can, so I take the opposite stance from you. I'm much more wary of my own government spying on me, since they can hurt me a lot more easily than some country on the other side of the Earth.

Extremely well put.

> Then why have US tech companies like Facebook taken so much flack in the past year for privacy issues?

Because they've also mishandled the private data of Americans. Similarly to the NSA stuff, Americans appear to be fine with it if it is done on their behalf to the rest of the world, but are outraged when they experience it. If FB operated differently in the US, I'm sure the US press would be much more sympathetic with regards to their shenanigans in Europe.