The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my (rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need one legal system for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an international court system. I've blogged about this before[1], although I intend to rewrite much of what's on that old site since I don't think it's communicated very well.
I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it lasted, but I'm now going to have to start taking my skepticism of US law seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can.
A legal system as only as good as those who control it.
One way to define what the law is, is that it's the will of the strong imposed upon the weak. In the Middle Ages for example the "strong" were barons who imposed laws upon the peasants through their men-at-arms.
Today we have various competing legal systems fighting either for global control or defending their local "sovereignty". When we reach the point of one global legal system, we will have found a winner.
I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it lasted, but I'm now going to have to start taking my skepticism of US law seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can.
[1] http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/