Let me follow your definition, say, in the case of Ancient Rome. There is a minority of masters and a majority of slaves. Minority of masters has a dissent (from the slave's point of view, of course) that slaves should stay slaves. So, according to you, it is wrong for them to fight for their freedom, right?

I do know a thing or two about the difference - and one has to understand the mentality of people living under a certain political system - the system only survives when there's enough acceptance, from a majority no less and acceptance happens because that's what people grow up with. That's why under stalinism at least there was so much emphasis on propaganda.

But you see - it's one thing for my country to do it, because if I suffer from it, I have legal ways to fight it. It's another thing entirely for a foreign government with so much power to do it, let alone a government that directly controls and that can subdue the biggest companies that operate on the Internet. Depending on the country, the NSA doesn't have enough jurisdiction or power to subdue a foreign company, regardless of any treaties, therefore depending on the country, I can trust a more local company more than I can trust a US company - since a US company can be quietly subdued to whatever the NSA wants without recourse or without me finding out about it.

And I do realize that if I'm targeted directly, then short of keeping myself offline, there's no way to protect my data. But my biggest fear is that my personal data will end up being processed in bulk by incompetents. My personal ID ended up in a local newspaper by mistake because of incompetents running our governmental institutions (even though that's illegal). I've got important data that I care about - while at the same time I've got nothing to hide - but do I want my personal data, like pictures, love or angry letters, source code of personal projects and so on and so forth to end up being processed by incompetents? Hell no. And if it does happen, I want to be able to strike back.

With the US government doing it, I have no recourse, no path I could take - since I'm not a US citizen and I don't have money for the fees practiced by US lawyers anyway, while at the same time, my voice is not heard because I'm a foreigner. Heck, I don't even have a right to vote, if that counted for something. Can you see my problem here?

That's why I'm of the opinion that the US government should try really hard to fix what they broke, since we all have enjoyed the freedoms provided by the global Internet and it would be a pity if balkanization happens because some idiots thought it would be cool to process the emails of individuals without warrants and in bulk.