I think you can both say you'd rather live in the US, and at the same time our intelligence agencies do just as much (if not more) damage worldwide. For example if you live in South America the US is a much bigger risk to you than other countries because they overthrow any govt they don't agree with, regardless of what the people of the country want. Russian spying doesn't seem to result in much damage as far as I can tell, while US spying is regularly used to undermine democracy.

If the motto of a country was "we'll keep you safe inside but we'll be treating everyone outside terribly", then you'd definitely rather live inside that country, but it doesn't mean they're less of a risk to the world.

I'd rather not live any under of them, and that's the reason I live in Europe. This is not the first time the US (an ally country) hacked European companies to gather data about European citizens (or in other cases technology).

> Would you rather live under the American, Russian, or Chinese government?

alt: Would you rather be mistreated by a relative or a stranger?

As an American I'd rather my gov be held accountable for it's unethical IC behavior - especially by it's allies.

The reason is that other nations are proving grounds; the methods developed there will eventually be leveraged by US government(s) against US citizens.

I would prefer it was China or Russia, if then had a grunge with me, the bar would be higher for them to do something that affected me. Americans can put you on some secret list and generally ruin your life on the basis of nothing

Maybe I'm just a trivial person, but when I ask myself why I wouldn't live in those places, or any place, I find I'm simply psychologically incapable of being motivated by anything other than living standards, the attractiveness of members of my opposite sex, proximity to friends and family, and all that.

I would much rather not live in China, for the same reason I'd much rather not live in Montana, i.e. the living standards are a LOT lower in China than where I am, and it will be a lot harder to meet someone on places like Tinder I can feel attracted to.