I feel it's kind of odd for these people to go to Germany to flee the NSA, since this sort of thing is happening on German soil, through German initiatives (unl

I feel it's kind of odd for these people to go to Germany to flee the NSA, since this sort of thing is happening on German soil, through German initiatives (unless you're thinking that Germany is still some crazy puppet state of the USA). While "consumer privacy rights" mean that you are much more protected against companies in Europe, privacy rights vis-a-vis the governments are virtually non-existant. If you go back and look through the Snowden leaks, you can see that the UK, France, and Germany have extremely deep spying practices with _absolutely no pretense of privacy concerns_. At least in the US we're trying (or at least pretending to try). To my knowledge the craziest thing like this that has happened on US soil is people being held up in the airport (I am prepared to stand corrected on this point). For at least the case of France, I can state with certainty that the NSA has much more restrictions in place than the DGSE has for spying on its own citizens (and others). By spouting the "US pressured Europe to act on these things" meme, we're doing nothing but harm. We're reducing the agency of these governments in the decisions they'll wilfully take up anyways, and missing some gaping holes in European civil rights.