An article worth re-reading now: Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. (2008) [1]. The graphic shows (at the time) what percentage of regional Internet bandwidth passes into U.S. & Canada [2]: at the time, 70% of Latin American traffic, 50% of Asian/Pacific traffic, 20% of Europe's traffic, and some African traffic (most of which actually goes through Europe).
As an american living abroad whose job to a large degree is to talk to foreigners, I find all of this totally frightening. And I don't know what I can actually do about it.
Can you clarify that statement? I am not sure if you are frightened that people are now by passing the US for network traffic which will make the NSA moderately less effective. Or rather are you frightened for the underlying reasons that are driving them to do so, which is quite reasonable?
Did you even read the article? The article says nothing about bypassing network traffic. It talks about emails from americans to foreigners being sifted for keywords.
Actually in this instance I did not. I often times enjoy reading the comments more then the articles as the opinions here give better insight into the topic. So this time I was caught with my pants down so to speak, thanks for pointing it out lol ;)
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html
[2] I'm guessing this is highly representative of pipes going into the U.S. alone