content: If you want the facts on something, you need to find three articles. One from a source which thinks the agent in question is the enemy. One which is neutral. One which which thinks the agent is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sputnik is a good source for category 1 when it comes to the actions of the US government, but you won't get the full story until you have category 2 and 3 on the same subject. Category 2 would be other states without a dog in the fight which take the privacy of their citizens much more seriously (Iceland, Switzerland), Category 3 would be any mainstream US media source. On this subject you'll hear a lot of hyperbole about how evil the US is for doing this terrible thing from category 1, a depressed shrug of the shoulders, acknowledgement that it's true, and almost every other country does it too, and that's just how things are from category 2, and lots of cheerleading about how it helps fight terrorists with zero evidence in support of this position from category 3. The conclusion I draw from the above is that the states of the world, especially the larger and more powerful ones, view their citizens as little more than cattle. Economic drones to be parasitically drained in order to finance the costs of their great game, and asking them to respect their citizens privacy would be looked at much like you asking the local rancher to respect his livestock's privacy. The depressing thing is, the fact that we let them get away with it means that they're basically right.