I know it's not the same issue, but throughout the whole NSA snooping revelations, Americans have only been concerned by the legality of spying on their own citizens. All of us foreigners are fair game.
This is similar. The value of an American life is much more than that of a foreigner's life.
When the US government decides a US citizen's communication patterns makes him a terrorist, the US government is free to knock down their door in the middle of the night and whisk them off to Guantanamo, and NO ONE except the US government can do anything to stop them.
When the US government decides a foreigner is a terrorist, they have to ASK your government to cooperate, and if they don't, the US has to be ready to go to war to kill/capture him.
The difference between the NSA spying on an American and a foreigner is that only the foreigner has a government that can protect them from the US government.
Pakistan is a nuclear power and even they don't have a government that can protect its people from the US government.
While I dislike how the U. S. government has decided that who they classify as terrorists superceding the rights of a US citizen, this is just wrong. Communicating with terrorists on a typical basis isn't enough for the U. S. government to do so - the only cases where I have heard of this happening is when the US citizen in question has carried out actual violent terrorist actions such as armed combat.
You have far less protection against the U. S. government if you are not a citizen, since there is nothing protecting you against broad actions. You can be assassinated in the middle of the night & your government wouldn't be able to do a damn thing to pre-empt that. There are also far less protections as to spying as well, but that has nothing to do with this article.
For the time being. Do you think how the surveillance apparatus currently works is how it will always work in perpetuity?
Some B.A. in the NSA digs through your traffic and decides you are some terrorist mastermind, next thing you know a Hellfire blows up your home and family.
So maybe we can someday go to globalism. Putting the whole of humanity inside your circle of concern, not just your friends and members of your tribe.
Still, judging from the actions of the democratically elected UK government, you lot don't seem to do much better...
Our government isn't democratically elected - had they enacted the electoral reforms that they said they would, the next might have been - but they won't, and it won't be.
Americans feel this way, sure. But Americans are only 4% of humans, and soon 100% of humans will be on the Internet.
This worldview is not an economic survival trait.
I suggest relaxing, brewing some tea, and waiting for this to play out in the global market. Either they'll change, or they'll go out of business.
I know this may seem like semantic silliness, but here of all places i expect accuracy within region. to the larger point, at this time, american minds are more valuable in terms of conviction, as it is our country that is so reckless in regards to others, be it in the realms of security, supply lines, manufacturing, etc. This is no an inherent value; the most important dude at the party is always the person with the weed. It is not because she is better than her peers, it is because of her relationship to here peers in the context of what they want and what she has. Before you charge up your righteous indignation cannons, this "importance" along with all the times i must sit through a harangue about why i need to be more respectful/appreciative of the greatest nation on earth drives me, and many other americans, completely nuts. i fucking hate it, but when i travel, my brothers and sisters from overseas will only let me be a shitty american. some of us over here are paying attention, you know.
pass the tea, mate. this whole coffee thing needs to end as well.
4.28%
I'm American. I don't feel that way at all.
Here's a sobering thought: The way super-villains are portrayed in movies is basically how leaders were expected to act up through the 1600's. Screw over and kill your neighbors to benefit your side? Just business as usual. Torture and gruesome and spectacular executions? Just business as usual. Kill prisoners and animals in large part because of the entertainment value? Just expected behavior.
I wonder if the way leaders and the national security apparatus behaves now will be viewed as super-villainy in the future? Probably.
There's a high cost in both money and human lives - nationality should not be a consideration.