Consider just a lot of US surveillance laws: we non-US citizens might as well be animals for the rights we have. Significantly different than what our own local/EU privacy laws award us.

Also it is significantly easier to take legal action againsy my own government agencies than US ones.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

CN? When did China join 5 eyes?

Where are the results? Better yet, public scrutiny? Everything's a fucking national secret.

There is also familiarity with the government carrying out the surveillance to be taken into account. For most European countries, particularly the one that have been members of the EU for some time there is quite good rule of law and so the consequences of being monitored are potentially less severe. Looking at governments with lots of resources to spare or ones without a good rule of law then surveillance is likely to make people more nervous - which is exactly the intent.

The vast majority of them don't have even 1% of the NSA's budget for spying.

The likely reality is that the U.S. has a lesser desire than most other governments to suppress liberty, privacy, and free expression, but their capability is so much greater in magnitude than the others that they end up being the worst offender in the world anyway.

So you can't just say that "every government is bad." Some have worse motives than others, and some are more competent than others. As a result, citizens of governments who are only in it for the bribes and mistresses and are otherwise somewhat bumbling incompetents (and I'm not naming names here), are likely safer than citizens of governments who believe they have a mission from God to be the sword and shield of the righteous, and hire thousands of the smartest people in the world to carry that mission out.

The point being that yes, all governments are a nonzero threat to all people, but severity equals risk multiplied by impact. You really have to address the shit that the U.S., Russia, and China are doing to the global network first.

Yes bumbling Europeans are less dangerous but only because they have outsourced their intelligence to the US. China and Russia are more dangerous but only to their own population.