Political and legal borders interact to create a potentially balkanized future internet. Time Magazine says The Future of the Internet is Balkanization and Borders.

Rousseff’s plan to create walled-off, national Intranets followed reports that the United States has been surveilling Rousseff’s email, intercepting internal government communications, and spying on the country’s national oil company, so it was somewhat understandable. But her move could lead to a powerful backlash against an open Internet – one that would transform it from a global commons to a fractured patchwork severely limited by the political boundaries on a map.

The former Brazilian president wanted to protect her privacy by reinforcing political borders on the web.

The NSA has also opened a Pandora’s box by treating “citizens” and “foreigners” differently (even defining both groups in myriad different ways). U.S. rules also impose geo-locational-based jurisdictional mandates (based upon the route of your Internet traffic or the location of the data services and databases you use). Already, a German citizen accessing a New York City data center via a Chinese fiber line may find their data covered by an array of conflicting legal requirements requiring privacy and active surveillance at the same time.

What does it mean to be a citizen vs a foreigner when browsing the web and using the internet?