[ds9]

Well said.

How to get there is a difficult question - particularly the political question of how to get better policies in place. It is effectively a test of democracy, whether the people in each country (the majority of whom, I assume, prefer not to be pervasively wiretapped) can actually influence government behavior.

As for what the policy would look like, well probably each national government will be unwilling to give up much of its interception capabilities, but maybe they would like to avoid interception by other governments. So as one possible reform, one can imagine an international arrangement where nations would monitor the undersea cables and remove any spy devices.