Public_Domain Public_Domain:
ALl information that goes through the United States is at best considered compromised, no matter how it ended up being routed through the States (inevitable, basically). But they don't do anything. Not even to "Terrorists"... They just log it all and wait. From what we know they have access to, they sure as hell would be able to chase down at least a few pedophiles, but apparently not.
I think all the leaders turn into wimps once they reazlie they are basically figureheads with a microphone.
Overseas cable was laid with the intent of having it all come ashore at certain points. People started to get wary when the cable came in to specific rooms that no one had access to, and could only tap into these cables when they left those rooms. It was the first rumors of the project called 'Echelon' and as it turned out the 'foilers' were wrong. But only to the extent of the program. Turns out, it was much worse than anyone thought.

Notice that traffic that goes from Asia to Europe will tend to go through North America first?
Public_Domain Public_Domain:
Also, the Americans don't have to worry about the NSA... We spy on Americans for them. The NSA spies on everyone but Americans. The Five Eyes pact is weird and reminds me of corporate tax avoidance schemes. In order to skirt the fact that we have it on paper that our government shouldn't have unmitigated access to our information, we spy on our friends and then give them the resulting information because of spy treaties that allow information to be shared between the five countries. So we deal with the NSA, they deal with CSIS.
Actually, that would be the SEC, formerly known as CSEC. CSIS would tend to deal with the FBI and CIA, SEC would be analogous to the NSA.
I recall the furour over the Government plan to create the 'Supersdatabase' of all government information about us. So instead, they just let the NSA or GCHQ do it for them. Problem solved.