I think a better example might be China.

Let's say you say something less than pleasant about China, or you like Winnie the Pooh.

China has already demonstrated the will and influence necessary to extend pressure on other companies, governments, and etc to deal with such things.... and you have far less recourse (if any) to deal with (or know about) it than most anything.

I post this a lot but it's true:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

But let's also be clear that much like your data being held by a corporation, leaks, etc all happen... if Russia has it, so may someone closer to you.

It’s already been proven that the NSA also surveils on US citizens via PRISM and so on, I think what he’s trying to say is this should be a bigger concern than some foreigners.

Well as my quote indicates I agree.

But I think it is also unhelpful / inaccurate for every non free nation that comes up we get these sort of "What about this place!?!?" false equivalency arguments.

This is indeed exactly what I'm intending to say :)

> what can they do to me if they don't like what I say?

Leave a little nerve agent on your doorknobs.

Based on historical statistics, there's an approximately 5 in 8,000,000,000 chance of this actually happening, and if you've never talked to a Russian in your life, the statistic drops to 2 in 8 billion (those poor souls who were injured accidentally)

That is an inflated statistics of people in the USSR killed by the tyrant of their own country. If anything it supports the point made above.

I am acutely aware of the Holodomor. However those who died in the Holodomor were not killed by nerve agents, they were killed by forced starvation.

that would be the UK government, has nothing to do with the FSB (which is btw ~ FBI of Russia) or NSA.

They can blackmail you with any information that came up in your private conversations, that you'd rather keep private.

I think the actual danger to me from either organization is approximately nil. So it makes little sense to rank them this way.

Also the FSB would probably report on you to the US govt anyway, if you were actually up to something big enough that the NSA would have taken interest.