> Remember that the American agencies aren't the only intelligence agencies in the world.
But they (US+UK) are, agencies that have been allowed natural access to the infrastructure and resources required to implement surveillance on such a global scale. So much so that other intelligence agencies are making deals to get access via them. So, say, the Dutch AIVD, they don't have the majority of Internet data flowing through their territory (with nearly all large tech companies being US, clouds, browsers, software etc) so they can't directly abuse this access, because their scope is limited, unfortunately they can still trade for it because we have two nice big ports with transatlantic Internet cable connections (unless we already traded US access to those for something else, I don't know). So sure, they're being bad, but they're also limited, and they're not the root of the problem.
The US and the UK are in a very unique position for global Internet surveillance.
But they (US+UK) are, agencies that have been allowed natural access to the infrastructure and resources required to implement surveillance on such a global scale. So much so that other intelligence agencies are making deals to get access via them. So, say, the Dutch AIVD, they don't have the majority of Internet data flowing through their territory (with nearly all large tech companies being US, clouds, browsers, software etc) so they can't directly abuse this access, because their scope is limited, unfortunately they can still trade for it because we have two nice big ports with transatlantic Internet cable connections (unless we already traded US access to those for something else, I don't know). So sure, they're being bad, but they're also limited, and they're not the root of the problem.
The US and the UK are in a very unique position for global Internet surveillance.