It's illegal to break into computers in all civilized countries. The director of the NSA should be extradited to China to face justice for his crimes (after being punished in the US for his crimes here, of course).
And what should happen with the Chinese higher ups who authorized hacking teams to infiltrate the U.S. and other Western targets?
Further, who gets to decide what should happen and why, exactly, that's what should happen?
No country is going to deport the people running its defense programs to countries those defense programs are being run against, unless it's surrendering unconditionally and that's one of the demands it must yield to.
The whole act of "gathering foreign intelligence" seems very immoral to me. Saying that everybody does it is no justification, neither is saying that it is a requirement for national security, because national security threats, as I see it, in the US, are a consequence of US the invasive and offensive foreign politics and military presence. While I understand that there's an inherent need for national security, I fail to see how that justifies breaching the privacy of foreign/domestic targets if the same issue can be dealt with by changing the stance on foreign nations through foreign and military politics.
Just as it is immoral for me to probe around my neighbours house to see if he has plans to break into mine, it is immoral to breach foreign security measures even if they are digital. Things like this should not be just shrugged at, be the perpetrator US, Chinese, Russian or Middle-Eastern.
Why is it okay that US government institution is above the law in this regard? How can people feel okay with governmental institutions breaking the law?
I suspect most Americans are comfortable with government operating outside the laws of other countries that are viewed as having an adversarial relationship with the US. Individuals may differ on this, but Snowden's credibility will be lost in the court of public opinion if he starts handing over information to China.
Of course the law states an exception for such cases, and usually includes(at least as far as nordic countries are concerned, which of course has no relation to the law in US, but it's something I am more familiar with) a statement which requires/encourages "least required force" too. So you can't just beat someone up in the name of "self defense".
The public opinion itself, as far as it seems to be, is that whatever is good as long as it's in the interest of US, be it morally justified or not. For example violating the privacy of foreign internet users is all good and somehow justified because "it keeps US citizens safe". Yeah right.
The interesting thing is that the U.S. system seems to function from within the head of the accused: given the situation as you perceived it, did you believe you had no other options other than deadly force on your attacker? While your description of the Nordic system indicates that it functions from a more dispassionate, third-party observer's perspective.
If you fear for your life or are in danger of serious bodily harm you normally have the right to use deadly force (sometimes you must also have no way to escape, but let's just assume you're clear to use deadly force). Once you're in that situation it's advantageous to actually use that force. You wouldn't try to shoot someone in a hard-to-hit area like their knee or shoulder because as you say, if you had the time or perceived the danger to be low enough to line up for a shot like that, you were probably not in a situation so extreme that would warrant use of deadly force. It would be legally more defensible to go all Mozambique drill on somebody on put two in the chest and one in the head.
However, given that you are in the situation where you must defend yourself, but where deadly force would not be allowed, proportional response is usually still the operative concept.
If someone comes at you with a bat and you manage to disarm them that doesn't give you carte blanche in the U.S. to beat the attacker to within an inch of their life.
So is suggesting that a guy who did something totally legal in his country (UK) should be extradited to the US to face charges there.
This is a very immature view of how countries interact with each other.
What if those computers are breaking into computers in your country? While I wouldn't be surprised if we are involved in things like this more broadly, we have no way of knowing, from the information presented, if this was the result of counter-espionage attempts.
I wasn't aware there were ones that applied to persons/institutions OUTSIDE the country.