Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

but guess what, there isn't a country in the world that doesn't have it's own version.

And of course it's mission is to spy on foreigners, that's the mission of almost every spy agency in the world (there are a handful that are explicitly created to do internal spying, but far fewer of those)

There are laws explicitly prohibiting the NSA from doing internal spying. No, it's no surprise that these laws have been broken at some point (organizations are made of people, people are not perfect, at some point, someone will abuse their power)

However, what is surprising is the fact that the government has created a secret interpretation of the law that they claim says that they are allowed to do this.

There is a lot of disagreement on if this is really legal or not, and there are a good number of calls to make it explicitly illegal again, overriding these 'secret interpretations' of the law.

Will this stop all abuse? Of course not!

By the way, for proof that other countries have similar problems, just look at the Kim Dotcom case. There it was the New Zealand spy agency, and there are laws prohibiting them from going after permanent residents (like Dotcom), and that has given the government a black eye. Unfortunately, the last I heard is that they are now working to change the law to make such internal spying legal.