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Couldn't the government then obtain the information without any judicial oversight? A foreign country is only safe if the software is 100% secure and the employees can't be bribed with government-level resources.

(Look at what the Chinese government did when they wanted information from the New York Times. No judge approved that disclosure...)

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They can, and they do. It's not a violation of the Fourth Amendment if a private company hands over (or sells) data to the government.

The international barrier is a large extra hurdle to cross.

Well is it? Isn't that how NSA for years has bypassed the "spying on US citizens" law and just went spying on everyone else in Europe and the rest of the world. Presumably any other country could in theory spy on US citizens without any legal obstacles in its way. Then any two countries could just exchange black lists of people who are considered suspicious. Or say outsource all this to a large corporation. US govt maybe can't spy but not sure if Verizon or L3 can't.

Depends on who is crossing the barrier. If it's the NSA and other similar foreign agencies, it's fairly easy due to ECHELON.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

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