Newly published NSA documents show agency could grab all Skype traffic

Several countries have agreements with the US on how to handle data belonging to that countries citizens. I don't have much knowledge offhand of other country's procedures and laws/regulations, but the US treats data from the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand very similarly to how it treats US data (meaning, it has a protected status). None of this is secret; these are all publicly available mandates, executive orders and laws.

As far as willful information sharing, at least when it comes to the U.S., all applicable laws still apply. The UK can't just give data pertaining to a US person to the US Government. The USG still has to follow the legal process for that data to be disseminated. This page has some relevant documents, both leaked and released. Specifically, notice the third caption on the leaked PDF in the last section of leaked documents. It reads "Details of NSA's agreement to share personal data of U.S. citizens with Israel's ISNU", but nothing in that document actually explicitly discusses handing over US person data to Israel. It talks about unminized, raw signals intelligence collection being shared with the ISNU and the fact that the US expects Israel to treat any unintentional US person data with the same minimization that the NSA does (meaning, report the incident and delete it). It just goes to show no one actually reads the documents, or the laws, or the regulations.

Meanwhile, I don't believe U.S. citizens, in the eyes of the world, should be held to a different standard. That's unrealistic. If some other country has the desire to spy on U.S. citizens (for reasons unknown) and has the means to do so, it will likely happen. That act, in and of itself, is not any more or less egregious than U.S. spying.

And finally, I know Reddit hates the "I have nothing to hide" argument. I'm not going to say that. We all have things we would like to remain private. I will say I have nothing that would interest some foreign country, and to spy on me personally would be a waste of time. If I were plotting to blow up Big Ben, The Kremlin, the Arc de Triomphe, etc, that might be a different story.

/r/worldnews Thread Link - arstechnica.com