Brazil's government (and UNASUR as well) is pushing for building connectivity for all of South America, excluding the USA, so all information flows between countries without going through US companies.
My point is simply that people shouldn't be looking to the standards bodies for help. They were at best asleep at the switch for the last 20 years, and at worst complicit. The most charitable thing you can say about "Internet governance's" role in dragnet surveillance is that they prioritized internal politics over end-user safety, again and again and again.
I don't blame the people involved with these groups; most of them are involved with the best of intentions. The failures of Internet governance are the expected emergent behaviors of any standards body.
Here's what it's about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication...
A few choice proposals the UN demanded be implemented (mostly, but not exclusively, pushed by China and islamic nations):
1) Banning of anonymity on the internet (Chinese style no commenting without a government-verified name below the comment)
2) Pervasive options for all government to remove any piece of content from the internet, irrespective of where it's hosted.
3) The ability of any worldwide governments to retract naming assignments from any entity for any reason.
4) The ability for governments to demand transit IPSs themselves implement "great firewalls" around any territory (including the very inconvenient (for service providers) url blocking, since of course police or governments can't be bothered to think)
Here's what these governments wanted to see: you offend China, as a Finnish citizen ? no more IPs for you, not from RIPE, ARIN, or anywhere. Posted a videoclip illustrating that the islamic prophet is a mass-murdering slaver ? No more dns names for you.
They intend to use this to exert media control on the new media. Western EU is upset that neo-nazi organisations have internet sites that they effectively can't touch, and can't find the owners of. Eastern EU are almost-dictatorships, and well ... don't ask. China, well, can't just download the mail of the Dalai Lama anymore. And islamic governments are terrified of their own citizens and want the ability to take Danish cartoons offline, and porn, and ... before history repeats itself. None of this is good for freedom, of course.
For half of the governments involved that this is bad for freedom is the very reason they're doing it.
Anybody who thinks this move is anything other than non-US governments threatening these guys into giving them what they demanded before is delusional.
Anybody thinking more freedom will be the result is a dangerous lunatic.
But even if we weren't, it would be possible for American agencies to intercept Canadian traffic without any sort of due procedure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Community
"The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as Five Eyes (FVEY). It was first signed in March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States and later extended to encompass the three Commonwealth realms of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. "