Pedant alert
Whomever created that graph needs to go away and consider what "total" means.
A good deal of folk aware of NSA leaker Edward Snowden have improved the security of their online activity after learning of his exploits, a large survey has found. Researchers from think tank The Centre for International Governance Innovation collected responses from 23,376 users between October and November and found 60 …
Not really.
Apart from the fact that "their own governments" probably have a combined capability orders of magnitude greater than the "normal" criminal class, the knowledge that those who officially claim to be protecting you are actually up to no good can be quite a motivator for some folk.
If you put every single "normal" criminal in my entire country together, had them pool their resources and work in collusion to harm me they could still only do one one hundred thousandth what my government could do.
What's more, my personal resources are not to be underestimated. Unless and until the "regular criminal class" chooses to band together and come for me in force, I'm perfectly capable of handling all but the very best among them. I have nothing which can stop my government.
Amen brother. How smart was it of the NSA to have such a massive trove of false trail documents just in case of such a leak? But I guess that's why their budget is so big, they think of these things that mere mortals like us can't even fathom. They also need to fund a heap of NGO contractors to work on these documents to maintain the pretense that it's all legitimate.
Bravo to the NSA, may they continue unencumbered.
"The research also touched on internet governance, reporting that no-one trusts anyone to run the internet although a cushy collection of NGOs, tech companies and engineers garnered 57 per cent of votes. About a third said the US should play an important role, but of these around three percent of punters in Western countries had complete faith in the US. Even patriots could only muster eight percent to the full confidence vote."
Count me as one Yank who trusts the US government and the Department of Commerce barely at all, but who trusts most or all of the available alternatives (that he's aware of) even less.
I have been much influenced on this particular topic (who gets the root zone files and tables) by the writings thereon of The Wall Street Journal's Gordon Covitz. I find them very persuasive.
There are things even worse and less trustworthy than the US government. Like the governments of China, Russia, and France.