He does not really trust them, and if you put him together with people like this http://www.grain.org/ or that http://www.semencespaysannes.o... (in French)
You'll find that they have lots in common...
Of course he (and other Free Software activists) also use things like planes for instance that are full of "non free" stuff, the position is to use
free software when ever it's possible (and not just "convenient").

Moreover your sentence

makes no sense: many useful things are only useful in their specific fields it does not make them garbage...

And transparence, independence from vendor lock-in, freedom ... makes sense in many "worlds"

Obviously, of course vi(m) is almost acceptable too ...
or teco, but only if you need to write assembly code (or lisp)

all other IDEs are of course for sisis....

It's not so much about the reality of "intrusion" but the "legality"...

Most European citizens do not really care if the NSA knows or not what they do, they DO care if some judge in South Texas can close down their operation because it happens to be "in the US" and thus stops them from serving their European customers.

The US separated the CIA from the FBI (or at least tried) so that the "extraordinary" powers of the CIA to help the US Governement "outside" of the US do not give too much police powers "inside" of the US.
But if through "the internet" a massive ammount of people and commercial interests that are "free to look at" "outside" of the us ends up "inside" and therefore liable to police actions "inside" then there is no balance of power left...

Not really, although some argue that a 2 party systems "converge" toward an optimum (there is an MIT paper on the subject from one of the well known MIT-AI hackers but I can't find it right now), personally I believe it just make rigging the
race easier...

But it is the US citizen's problem to fix...

Angela Merkel is addressing the EU citizens issues...

Well in the "best" of cases it would be a "Censitary" Suffrage where only people with enough money would be able to
vote and foreing "voters" need to pay more once to "buy" the vote and another time to "clean it up" and make it look
National....
And this kind of "democracies" do not end up very well...

Of course it will be "interconnected" the issue is "where will it be possible to host at a reasonable price services to european citizens" and therefore "what law does apply" ...

Nice try ...

So because the European governments are just as bad as the NSA we should not change anything and let the NSA go on spying on us ...

So how about we get the right to elect your representatives, senators and presidents after all at the en of the day this activity is costing us money (for instance whenever the US $ gets overprinted and becomes cheaper in practice it has the same effect as a tax on out exportations...

And what did those people say ? no taxation without representation ...

Now pleaqe get off my lawn ...

It is not so much an issue specifically related to privacy, but globally the "Internet" is the "infrastructure" of everything we do... without a powerfull network "in the countries or meta-countries (EU)" over time "everything" migrates to a "cloud" that ends up being where the "biggest, cheapest" infrastructure is i.e. progressivelly the US, and therefore "everything" comes under the reach of the US laws, wich means in effect that for instance "I" end up delegating to US citizens my right to vote, and frankly ... I'd rather not ...

Then at least there is an option to protest against the local "legally bad guy", the US is destroying democracy because in practice voting anywhere outside of the US is useless.
Either you live in a dictatorship (Like for instance Equatorial Guinéa wich is protected by the US petrol industry and whose "president" gets elected with 95+ % whenever he feels bored) and then voting is just a "show", or you live in a democracy, and then it does not matter who you are voting for because the US economy is basically bullying whom ever was elected into working in the way most profitable for the US, and the only choice is to be hurt "right now" by sanctions (and loose the next election) or being hurt by bad policies in a couple of year (and hopefully it will be the oposition's mess to handle)...

So unless the European Union starts to fess up and do exactly the kind of things Angela Merkel is proposing the world would be split between a disfunctional democracy (the US) and non democratic countries, where the most powerful is the one run by the Chinese "communist" party, not the most desirable outcome...
Including not very desirable for 99% of the US citizens, since it would end up with a small "elite" protected by an overreaching army and the rest of the citizens not really "needed" by the elite (with the exception of a minority of plumber, waitresses, hookers and other "personal service providers" ...)

Well last time "France" "trusted" "Gernany" (without being invaded first) was at the time of Emperor Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse, Karolus Magnus, ...)
that didn't work so bad (untill he died and handed over to his incapable sons who splitted the whole shebang ...)

And they could share the cost of satelite communication with the Bolivian government which just launched it's own satelite.

And if they start with providing enough connectivity for a couple of business hubs (wich means a couple of ethernet cables and wifi) they could try to use it to boost their economy, and if it works it will pay for itself.
If it does not work, then they will feel that they do not really need it (and since easy access to youtube and facebook will not really help the common cuban citizen anyway, it will be somewhat true).

Hopefully they'll find some way out of the current conumdrum withouth going back to batista times...

This waste of public money illustrate the fact that companies might be "Pushing Open Source" but not wanting to be "Open Source"...

Using "free" software is not really relevant if the company does not integrate a policy of putting software back into to "free" pool...
If they would use best practice, the level of contribution (+ probabley higher reuse) would make sure that they are not the "only player avaiable"...

And of course going over 80% increase of the initial deal should get you axed anyway, how the hell did it grow to 38 in 18 month ?

    Somebody willing to "show" his/her code would probably not end up in this situation, additionally even if the deal would be "more expensive than initially planned"
    at least the Australian government would have something they could promote, share, sell to other countries....
    That way they just have a big hole in the public account (and probably some people who have got a very nice and totally undeserved bonus of some form or another...)

Did you try to discuss the point with "people", the situation reminds me an old caricature about the "Dreyfus Scandal" end of the 19th century.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
(caption reads: A family Diner: "First of all let's not speak about the affair!" / "They did speak about it !" ...)

Just to make sure, you're joking right ? the GP did make a rather correct point ..

Not true, and not really relevant...

Any traitor is seen from the point of view of the "victim" if the "victim" ends up winning....

A "traitor" is somebody who breaks the trust of whomever has trusted him(or her) in order to give power to "another" entity...

But s/he can do this for gain (bad traitor) or "the greater good as s/he sees it" (good traitor, if his part wins ...)

And a "good traitor" might "go public" or not depending on the situation...

I doubt very much that ES wanted to help any of the "currently declared enemies of the US"....
So if General Alexanders would accuse him of being a "misguided useful idiot" he might have a point, accusing him of being a "traitor" is just a way of labeling him and doing character assassination ... probably because he absolutely knows that ES is not a traitor...

This still does not necessarily makes him an hero, .... or not ...