I see at more as akin to<p>&#62; Asking for permission<p>versus<p>&#62; Asking for forgiveness rather than permission<p>With censorship you are prevented from obtaining information, with surveillance you (might) be punished for obtaining information afterwards.  If the only reason for surveillance is to control actions (which is censorship), then do you define all law enforcement as censorship?  We're kind of digressing, but my point was that it's ridiculous to assert that surveillance of US international calls is worse than not allowing your entire country to surf wikipedia...