Massive Chinese Online Spy Programme Revealed

An enormous and elaborate programme for the purpose of spying on foreign government agencies has been discovered in China - though the Chinese government has denied any involvement. It seems that the programme extended beyond snooping on the machines: several computers were hacked such that the programme could have sent messages from the computers or used their mics and webcams.

This case involved spying on government agencies, but it raises an interesting thought: many of us worry about our own governments spying on us and seek to limit their ability to do so. However, we have no ability to limit the ability of foreign governments to spy on us. If foreign governments spy on our citizens, is that in any way not as bad as our own government spying on us? If foreign governments already have access to your most personal information, does that in any way weaken your desire to stop your own government from having access to it?