6 international responses to the NSA surveillance program

Newly released evidence of the NSA's widespread surveillance program has caused plenty of debate within the United States, although perhaps not enough to change any of the Obama adminstration's actual policies. The documents whistleblower Edward Snowden released to The Guardian and The Washington Post has caused outrage among privacy activists both in the United States and in countries around the world, many of whom are concerned that the NSA's invasive policies have affected their own citizens. Here, 6 reactions from around the world:

1. China

Artist Ai Weiwei, who has been harassed and arrested thanks to China's surveillance state, argued in The Guardian that the country he called home in the 1980s and early '90s has strayed from its ideals:

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2. Germany

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, recently called the NSA the "United Stasi of America" — a reference to East Germany's secret police force before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger noted that after World War II, Germany looked to the United States as an example of a free country:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will discuss the privacy concerns of German citizens with President Obama when he arrives in Berlin on June 18, shortly before the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

3. Belgium

The NSA scandal made the front page of Belgian paper De Standaard:

4. Switzerland

In Switzerland, where the Obama administration has been trying to make banks give up information on U.S. customers, many officials expressed bitterness towards the United States.

"There is little to nothing that we can do about it because even Swiss people give consent to hand over their data to U.S. companies," Swiss data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thür told the Tages Anzeiger newspaper. "People should be aware that once they have signed the terms and conditions their personal data will end up in the U.S."

Some Swiss citizens are also mad about an incident described by Snowden involving CIA agents setting up a drunk driving arrest in order to recruit a Swiss banker.

"What is really very serious is that [U.S.] agents are active on foreign territory, and violate the laws of the country where they are," Dick Marty, a former member of Swiss parliament, said on Swiss public radio. "This is not the first time they have done this, and I must say that they have been spoiled by the Swiss. For too long Switzerland has tolerated CIA agents doing more or less whatever they wanted on our territory."

5. Canada

"There is no border. The way telecommunication traffic is routed in North America, the fact of the matter is about 90 percent of Canadian traffic — no one really knows the exact number — is routed through the United States," Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, told The Toronto Star.

That has Canadian citizens concerned, including Globe and Mail columnist Ivor Tossell:

Ann Cavoukian, privacy commissioner for Ontario, was similarly distraught: "We have to just assume that all of our information is accessible. It just doesn't pass the smell test… It's inescapable, how inappropriate this is."

6. United Kingdom

British citizens have used the NSA revelations to question the powers of one of their own intelligence agencies, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Foreign Secretary William Hague has tried to quell fears that GCHQ and NSA are sharing information on Britons:

While U.K. officials can't monitor the internet communications of its own citizens without ministerial approval, plenty of internet companies popular in Britain are based in the United States, which critics say has created a gray zone.

"It is not the breaking of laws that is most troubling in this area, but the absence of them," lawyer Matthew Ryder told The Guardian. "Foreigners storing their personal data on U.S. servers have neither the protection that their own domestic laws would give them from their own governments, nor the protection that U.S. citizens have from the U.S. government."