Ultimately, realize that any dealing you have is open to the government if they so desire and make that part of your decision making process.
The US Government does _not_ have the legal authority to arbitrarily collect or seize data without a warrant specifying exactly where and what they're looking for.
>So much so that they have codified the few that it doesn't apply to.
There are a few exceptions on whom you can get warrants for, but we're not complaining about warrants with probable cause.
The complaint is that our "persons, houses, papers, and effects" are being violated without probable cause and without "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
It wouldn't even be a hard issue of the Supreme Court hadn't injected this "expectation of privacy" concept that appears nowhere in the text of the amendment.
[1] From Google's TOS: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
Of course, a lot information is actually generated by Google and even though it's about you (search history, etc) and doesn't belong to you.
Luckily, I don't normally need to account for that, and I'd rather keep it like that. But this is like somebody at the other end of the planet changing the small letters of my contract which I made with a local subsidiary of the American giant. The contract was between me and a local vendor, and suddenly we have the American government intervening?
As others have said, I have very little problem with the likes of google and MS having a lot of data on me, as long as they use it fairly and reasonably, and Im kept informed. Of course we do have the problem of government access to that data.
US is doing a lot of things wrong these days when it comes to privacy, but when compared to EU, I find it to be about the same.
As for money and lawyers, US, at least in CA has excellent public defenders. I might be biased, because a few of my good friends are public defenders. But also the smartest man I ever meat, at least when it comes to law, was head Public Defender in San Diego. Public defender job in a major city is a very competitive position. That's my first hand experience in CA. Not sure about other states.
Obviously, I have not done the comparison for all the crimes, but I think if done, we would find that EU and US both have very similar penalties for all the person crimes, like theft, robbery, rape, murder, etc. Where there is a big difference is probably in the crimes that have to do with national obsessions. For US it's drugs, guns, terrorism. For EU it's WW2 and holocaust, and also terrorism nowadays. But checking drug penalties in UK I also found them to be very similar to Federal statutes in US. [3] Though, if I had to guess, I would think the UK is far less likely to apply it's possession only laws. So, that's a valid criticism.
US does have an insane incarceration rate, but it's again due to our obsession with drugs. Take that out of the equation, and we are about even. Not that that makes it all ok, but I think we are on a path to changing that.
[1]http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/robbery... [2]http://www.shouselaw.com/robbery.html [3]https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing
The US may be fixing some of these things but for an idea of how the US system is viewed from over here right now check out the documentaries by Louis Theroux and the one entitled "The Farm -- Life on Angola Prison".
And I am totally fine with that in principle, only not with a few somewhat minor details and missing checks and balances.
I want _my_ government to be able to do all that, according to the laws of _my_ country, which I am able to change and influence.
Might want to remove them from your list. Mandated reporting by therapists and doctors does more than most anything else I can think of to stop those most needing therapy from seeking it. From potential offenders who fear being outed to victims who fear their therapy records being made public at trial and used against them.