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Comment by wouldbecouldbe | Hacker News Reader

EU countries are allowed to spy just fine. I remember we were all freaking out by Snowden's revelations about phone tapping in the USA. Dutch Journalist were describing how scandalous it was, while at the same time the Dutch intelligence been doing that for a long time without needing a warrant, were and no one really cared about it.

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There’s a difference between your own democratically elected government spying on its citizens and some other government you have no control over doing the same. Not saying that it’s good that the Dutch government was spying on its citizens, but it’s worse when it’s a foreign super power.

I disagree, it is the exact opposite in my opinion. Compromising data about myself isn't relevant to China (I am not in China), but perhaps relevant to my current or coming government.

The exception is if I am an official, a public persona or a dissident of the country doing the spying. But for everything else the impact of your own government spying on you is much more relevant.

Of course situations were friendly states spy on each other notwithstanding.

EU is not an unrelated 3rd party, its partly the democratically elected(the EU parliament) and partly the Dutch government(the Dutch head of state) and people appointed by those.

The foreign super power ath92 was referring to was the US, not the EU.

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