I agree that industrial spying by national agencies is rather common across the globe. The only difference here is the perception and magnifying glass / media spotlight.
Magnitude variance is assumed. Nobody would be surprised that the Russian army can best the Georgian army due to the difference in scale. Nor that the Chinese army with its 1.2 million soldiers can best Vietnam. In the same vein, I don't think anybody has ever had an expectation that the multi-hundred billion dollar US military was going to be spying as much as the Danish military. I think it has been understood post WW2 that the American DoD does a lot of spying in general. The revelation is primarily the total invasiveness into civilian lives, and willingness to flout laws everywhere.
Also, the combination with having a military mestastazing like mad all over the world is what makes the spying kinda extra creepy. I guess there were times when France was declaring itself as the beacon of freedom and democracy while waging war on the poor and non-aligned (internationally, that is), but that was before I was born.
That the spying itself is out of control, too, doesn't help. Then there is the amount of international communications that go through the US, versus the amount that goes through France.
There's not even a comparison -- a far cry from "the only difference is media spotlight". (reminds me of Bush voters talking about liberal media btw... if that offends anyone, good, because it takes real energy or natural talent to dismiss differences of orders of magnitude that easily)
