As bad as PRISM is/was there’s simply no comparison to giving god-mode credentials to actors in the CCP who can browse user data at will, and use it to suppress anything they see fit.
I would still make more sense to set an example and control the behavior of people you are indirectly accountable for in a democracy. No matter how much of a joke that sounds in context of any agency able to survey almost all your communications.
And it does sound like a joke already. Maybe having a strong democracy would actually be a good defense against autocracies that behave like China.
Maybe stop security agencies posing a security threat in the med to long term because nobody really believes in democracy anymore.
The only difference is whether it is "our" or "their" guy doing the dirty. But if they're doing us dirty, they're not "our" guy no matter what nationality they are...
