One of our former presidents, Mitterand in the 80ies, used intelligence services to eavedrop phone conversations for his own needs.
You'd think people would revolt, but more recently in order to operate the "three strikes" law and HADOPI they delegated the monitoring of P2P/Interenet trafic (in order to check for IP rights violations) to a private company.
We have laws about the privacy of communications too (like paper mail), but strangely nobody seem to realize they plainly apply to electronic communications.
I'm waiting for the same EU HN users to start calling for the banning of all French citizens from the rest of Europe, and the blockading of all French online services, as they did with the US yesterday. Perhaps how all French citizens need to be punished so they'll force their government to change their behavior...
Maybe we'll see some German politicians talking about how bad French companies are for being complicit with their intelligence services and they need to make sure their citizens don't use any French services. But, I'm not holding my breathe - because, I'm sure that attacking France will do little for most politician's re-election chances over there.
[Edit: Down-votes? If you're going to disagree with me regarding the political opportunism and lack of criticism of France, then come out and say it.]
I'm guessing, nobody will react. We already have the most impopular president of the last 50 years, one of the highest tax rates of modern country, highest unemployment rate, high abstention rate in elections, high immigration rates, high debt ratios, and the extremist political parties are on the verge of gaining massive support in the next european elections.
That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous experiences of terrorists bombing our country, makes me think that we really have far bigger issues than the secret service spying everyone at the moment.
Immigration can be a huge force for growth and prosperity as much as it can be destructive. You can think of a country as a company, and of immigration as recruitment. Recruitment will make, or kill, a company.
