You seem to be ignoring China, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and several other powerful nations in your assertion that the US is the only credible power player on the world stage. The biggest, perhaps, but certainly not the only one - and not the only one taking advantage of American military and intelligence assets because they find it in their own political interests to do so.
You realize that all nations you listed but China are pretty much "one and the same" as the US when it comes to NSA spying? You only underlined how disproportionally powerful that intelligence alliance is.
The NSA only kinda cares about US law when operating against US citizens inside US borders. Outside of this, the gloves are fully off and from what we've seen, pretty much everything goes. Billions of people outside of the US live in a much higher resolution panopticon than those living in it.
Comments
You seem to be ignoring China, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and several other powerful nations in your assertion that the US is the only credible power player on the world stage. The biggest, perhaps, but certainly not the only one - and not the only one taking advantage of American military and intelligence assets because they find it in their own political interests to do so.
You realize that all nations you listed but China are pretty much "one and the same" as the US when it comes to NSA spying? You only underlined how disproportionally powerful that intelligence alliance is.
Yes - that was my point, that a moral line between the "rest of the world" and the US can't be clearly drawn.
What is not clear about five eyes? Then you have China, maybe Russia. That's it. That leaves "rest of the world". Seems like pretty clear lines to me.
There are ~195 sovereign nations on the planet. Billions of people don't live in a US-style panopticon.
The NSA only kinda cares about US law when operating against US citizens inside US borders. Outside of this, the gloves are fully off and from what we've seen, pretty much everything goes. Billions of people outside of the US live in a much higher resolution panopticon than those living in it.