The revelation that the NSA has a back door into telecommunication switches in the U.S. is going to be a major bombshell around the world. A few years ago, there was a rather major international problem with Microsoft Windows. See, many governments use Windows on their computers. And they process, of course, many state secrets within this. With Windows, there was a large fear that, since the code was hidden entirely from view, the NSA or another agency could slip a backdoor into the OS, allowing the U.S. government to read any material produced by a foreign government.
After much protest from governments (including threats to move their OS's to linux-based open source code), Microsoft caved in and agreed to open its source code to select members of governments (of course, under rigorous confidentiality agreements, etc.).
Unfortunately, we now have a new iteration of this problem. In the case of the internet, for example, Cisco routers play a large role as the backbone of the internet. They exist the world over, and they are all American technology. With telephone switches, it is much the same case.
So, since the NSA has now been revealed to have backdoor access to all of the communications switches in the U.S., by default they have the same access in almost any country across the world.
It should be interesting to see the reaction, once our allies start realizing that this is yet another way in which we can spy on their most privy information.
Brave New World...