Is attacking their <i>allies</i> inside their territories, breaking, entering, installing viruses and malware against the <i>personal</i> home computers of civilians in allied countries ... is that considered &quot;legal&quot; from a US point of view? Which is what they did to the completely innocent civilian sysadmins of a large Belgian telecom.<p>Was that US-legal to whistleblow? Was it US-legal to perform acts of cyberwarfare against allies? I mean we all know how the <i>rest</i> of the world feels about it.<p>You can try and draw a line between legal and illegal behaviour all you want. But that really means very little if that decision, what is legal and what is not, is made by a government&#x2F;legal&#x2F;intelligence system that gets away with anything because they are so powerful (torture, war crimes &#x2F; ignoring the ICC ..). Maybe not a very respectable moral compass to orient oneself by, don&#x27;t you think?<p>The so-called illegal parts of Snowden&#x27;s revelations informed me that basically <i>all</i> my data that ever went over the Internet is considered completely fair game by the US, GCHQ and the other Five Eyes. Other US-illegal parts of Snowden&#x27;s files told me that MY government is complicit, acting like a vassal state. As far as I understand, that last part is illegal to reveal from the POV of the US, cause it involves their secret intelligence missions and doesn&#x27;t reveal illegal behaviour of the US Intelligence per se (just those of the Dutch Intelligence).<p>So please, could you repeat that, to my face?<p>Is there an actual moral reason why it&#x27;s wrong to release those files? I believe not, but we could talk about that.<p>However, if you&#x27;re going to pick right and wrong on this matter by what is legal and what isn&#x27;t in the United States, then say it to my face: A non-US person is a second class person, even if they&#x27;re allies.<p>You believe it is right for <i>you</i> to know whether your government is doing illegal things or overstepping boundaries in surveillance. But you <i>also</i> believe that I, tripzilch, as a non-US civilian do not have that very same right; to know that my government is doing the very same, a lot of it <i>in service of</i> the US government. Or all the surveillance done for economic espionage? Better keep a lid on it because it only screws over those second-rate, non-US people? The biggest problem with the way that we&#x27;ve been doing thing is, the more we let you have the less that I&#x27;ll be keeping for me. Alright!