I think it's important to draw the distinction between freedom in terms of the freedom of speech on the internet and freedom from surveillance on the internet.

I think it's important to draw the distinction between freedom in terms of the freedom of speech on the internet and freedom from surveillance on the internet. The US is the largest monitor of the internet because most of the traffic passes through points it can monitor. Changing this would restrict US spying, but it would make it easier for other countries to do it (consider, given the announced Olympic surveillance plans) if all the traffic went through Russia). So you'd have to simply hope traffic doesn't get routed through countries who want to spy on each-other(remember, few if any countries have legal restrictions on foreign surveillance). It seems the only real solution to prevent surveillance is end to end cryptography. The part where it gets dicier is that many of the countries trying to get control of the internet have much poorer legal protections for freedom of speech or social acceptance of it than the US (e.g. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil).