Luckily strong encryption tools are built into every browser out there by default that prevents the ISP from seeing what you're doing on the web beyond the domain you are connecting to, and there are tools like Tor that can protect you even from logging of that.
Meanwhile, how will a nation build an internet providing balloon only for itself when the wind carries those balloons around the entire planet? And the very point of the project is to provide internet where there is currently none, meaning "organizations that are under the democratic control of those nations" (making the huge assumption that any particular country we're talking about is a democracy) haven't found it economically feasible and/or desirable to provide internet in these places.
What a golden example of a "middlebrow" dismissal.
Because of that I think that giving the balloons to the countries is perfectly possible - just hand them the remote for the ones above their heads.
Check out the "how loon works" video, it seems to back that up (the source article quotes it as well): http://www.google.com/loon/how/ at around 2:55
from the transcript:
> "Now we have some ability to steer in general, however, in the stratosphere, most of the time the winds actually flow from west to east. Because the winds generally circulate this way, we typically will have bands of our balloons that will be around the world at different latitudes. So if the balloons are circling around the bottom half of the world, eventually the balloon that's over South Africa will pass over South America."
Can you imagine what would happen if China was involved in a "preemptive" war against any other nation and killed ~300,000 people?
But when "First world" government does it, "oh they had good intentions...", "they were less likely to do any harm.."
Not necessarily. It may as well come from a belief that "first world" governments are better supervised by people, journalists and politicians, that legislative, judiciary and executive branches of government are actually independent, or that said country is far away and probably not interested as much in someone as his own government.
How unfounded and idealistic those beliefs are is a matter of discussion, but there are many possible reasons for preferring "first world" country as an entity controlling the flow of data. Compared to the alternatives, where corruption and nepotism are much more rampant, where the opposition is routinely persecuted by the government, where journalists are killed by special agents, where you can land in a prison for long years because you jokingly said something to your friend...
The citizens are free to remain unconnected. The countries are free to build their own infrastructure.
Perhaps the choice isn't "free" because the incentives are too compelling, but that says something in itself about the benefits (even if we just assume the hypothetical risk of spying is real, as you did).
I do think the concept of Project Loon is amazing, though.
I used to trust Google but I don't trust any government, sure as hell not the most megalomaniacal and power hungry one on the entire planet. By extension the rational perspective to take in light of recent revelations is to treat all entities subject to US law as if they were the US government proper. A people who are not permitted to dissent from their government are effectively indistinguishable from it.
Concerning stuff.