What really scares me about all this FISA and PRISM stuff is that they treat foreigners as essentially non-persons.
Something that struck me a while ago is that while most of the modern world talks about protecting "human rights", the ruling classes in the US always seem to talk about protecting things like "Constitutional rights" or "citizens' rights". I'm not sure what that says about their underlying attitude, but it can't be good.
The trouble is, a lot of places have at least tendencies in the same direction, it's just hard to see them if you're a native and get to go in the "EU citizen" queue at customs or whatever it might be, so you don't see how others visiting your country are treated even from the moment they arrive. And since typically those outsiders have no direct influence on policy in places they visit, there is no natural political incentive for each country's government to treat them as much more than a source of revenue for the tourism/education/commercial sector.
With the rise in modern times of ubiquitous international communications networks and relatively quick and easy physical travel between countries, unfortunately this seems to be a race to the bottom, with a lower bound determined only by the point at which people actually stop visiting/communicating with your country, which as a practical matter is going to be difficult for many people to do.
Well, i've seen people avoid visiting USA thanks to airport security
In fact, you're talking to one right now.
The way I look at it, there are many wonderful places in the world that I would like to visit one day, but I'm never going to make it to all of them in the one lifetime I get. I'd prefer to go to places where I will feel welcome and enjoy myself, not to places where the procedure on arrival or departure is going to make me feel like a criminal just for showing up.
Of course, some people have jobs that require them to travel or have family living abroad or for many other reasons would need to make much greater sacrifices than I do if they were to give up flying. So I try not to assume that everyone else can vote with their wallets as easily as I can on this one.
And another here. I'll pay more to not touch US soil when I travel and I certainly haven't been there in a long time.
I haven't got anything criminal going on, and don't hail from anywhere 'suspicious'. It's just that I don't trust US customs/TFSA to not ruin my day for no reason whatsoever.
Something that struck me a while ago is that while most of the modern world talks about protecting "human rights", the ruling classes in the US always seem to talk about protecting things like "Constitutional rights" or "citizens' rights". I'm not sure what that says about their underlying attitude, but it can't be good.
The trouble is, a lot of places have at least tendencies in the same direction, it's just hard to see them if you're a native and get to go in the "EU citizen" queue at customs or whatever it might be, so you don't see how others visiting your country are treated even from the moment they arrive. And since typically those outsiders have no direct influence on policy in places they visit, there is no natural political incentive for each country's government to treat them as much more than a source of revenue for the tourism/education/commercial sector.
With the rise in modern times of ubiquitous international communications networks and relatively quick and easy physical travel between countries, unfortunately this seems to be a race to the bottom, with a lower bound determined only by the point at which people actually stop visiting/communicating with your country, which as a practical matter is going to be difficult for many people to do.