It has less to do with people than with jurisdiction. The US administration can demand to do this or that on US soil and the maintainer, owner, programmer has little chance to do otherwise if he/she does not want to end in the prison. Hence, my opinion to choose distro with as least as possible influence by the US.
Attention Ubuntu users if you haven’t heard about it. There is currently a problem with the update, which is why it is stopped: Release Manager Simon Quigley on Reddit.