I probably should have said it is less bad than being spied on by foreigners. At least if you have a democratic country you can campaign and vote for candidate

I probably should have said it is less bad than being spied on by foreigners. At least if you have a democratic country you can campaign and vote for candidates promising to stop the mass intrusion or even stand on that platform. I don't like the monitoring but at least in a democracy there is something that can be done about it (not that it is easy to persuade a sufficient number of people to join a cause but it can be done). I would expect governments to try to protect their citizens from foreign spying[1] (and to try to spy on foreigners). I would expect them to regard other countries efforts as illegal and prosecute (or revoke diplomatic status and send home where applicable) those trying to spy on their citizens. Internally there are several different issues with the recent NSA: 1) The high level of intrusion offensive and dangerous at the apparent levels that it is currently occurring. 2) The democratic process seems to have been poorly followed, NSA is far exceeding its stated brief (foreign inteligence). 3) Constitutionally the situation seems at best dubious. Issue (1) applies internally and externally. The others are US internal issues. [1] See Echelon etc. and other actions as cases where this expectation is wrong.