"Upon hearing of the Orwellian-like surveillance at the Olympic games in Russia, the US team has decided to boycott the games. However, we are not boycotting the games because of Russia's surveillance plans, but because several major world governments now consider ubiquitous surveillance acceptable in free and open societies, with out own government, the US government, leading the way. We will cease our boycott when the US government sets a moral and ethical example for the Russian government to cease its plans by canceling its dragnet surveillance programs of both US citizens and our brothers and sisters from around the world. We are asking our brothers and sisters in competition from Russia, China, England and any other country guilty of mass surveillance to join us in this effort. If this demonstration ends any significance of the Olympic games this year and into the indefinite future it will have been because our collective governments no longer should good faith towards the people of this World, and we will no longer see a reason to continue to compete atheletically on their behalf."
The average person doesn't care about NSA surveillance-- just as the average person didn't care about Lincoln arresting newspaper editors and suspending habeas corpus, FDR putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, J. Edgar Hoover sending agents to spy on and harass suspected communists (or just people he didn't like), George W. Bush locking up terrorists in Guantanamo, etc.
When you get right down to it, historical precedent strongly indicates that the average person does not care whether the government actually respects the law in its pursuit of national security.
I don't know about the extent of spying to deal with political dissent in the EU, but I know quite a few people who were subjected to rather intense illegal surveillance in Norway, that was often clearly intended to intimidate (when top level people in the security services start conversations with you on the street about the argument you had with your wife, in your living room, the other night, it is pretty clear what the purpose is). When this monitoring was rolled up, it eventually was revealed that the leader of the parliamentary commission investigating the illegal surveillance had been put under illegal surveillance while he was investigating the illegal surveillance...
Given that this level of surveillance was happening in Norway relatively recently, I find it highly improbably that there's no extensive politically motivated spying in other European countries too, to this day, whether legal or illegal.
There is difference - sure. It is not politically acceptable to be seen to interfere with political parties at home in Europe or the US, so there may be less blatant interference these days, other than with fringe groups that are easier to find ways to label that makes them tolerable targets.
Some links from recent UK cases to get you started:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/12/met-chief-bri...
Steven Lawrence was a black teenager murdered in a racially motived attack in 1993. The racist police force bungled the investigation. This was a big scandal and there was eventually a public inquiry. Recently it has emerged that the police used undercover police officers to infiltrate and undermine the campaign by the family to get justice and expose the racism in the police force. The police neglected to mention this during the public enquiry.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/24/undercover-officer...
Over the course of several decades dozens of under cover police officers stole the identities of dead children and infiltrated environmental protest groups and were encouraged to enter into sexual relationships with women in the groups they were targeting. In some cases even fathering children with the women they were deceiving. All while still being married in their real lives, which they returned to once the assignments ended.
Rule of law is still a thing that exists, and courts play a part of it.
Ultimately the IOCC should do a better job of picking host countries in the first place, but they are more hopelessly corrupt than almost any other organization in the world.
Internationally Putin is seen as having struck a blow against American imperialism. It's clear Obama wasn't anticipating Russia to helpfully offer a way out of his "red line".
Perhaps you were hoping for the US to totally and completely control the entire process, and be able to take all credit? Seems a little greedy in the context of a diplomatic negotiation.
It is not part of the mission of the Olympic Games to destroy democracies.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/kroll/software-transparen...
If you conduct mass surveillance (as does the NSA, the brits and apparently many others too), then people will refrain from expressing themselves freely, out of fear of blowback. Problems will not be discussed anymore, solutions will not be proposed and corruption will flourish. That's the end of democracy.
Usually, schools teach these basics.
And there lies the problem now:
Since the US together with the EU have become too corrupt, there is no one left to guard the moral high ground. The conclusion would be that this misery is now the new standard - unless we begin to act.