Between FISC, the Patriot Act/USA Freedom Act, and such it doesn't seem like the US constitution is doing a good job at protecting anyone. There is a long wikipedia article named Mass surveillance in the United States, but not yet one for the EU.
I agree with your other points. There is this though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#European_Uni...
what we are seeing is that thanks to social media, more discourse is public. which leads to more prosecutions. that is not a regression. that stuff has always been prosecuted. and they go against hate speech, not wrong think.
Threats are something different
I think we’re far beyond hate speech being thought crime. It also means you can’t be honest about your reasons or viewpoint, thereby poisoning the public debate.
if that is not what you are talking about then we will have to look at he actual numbers being pointed out and the message they come with and the response to that.
That has never happened.
While I think the Vance meme reflects very poorly on my country, it is always advisable to remember that you have very limited rights in every country while crossing the border and that it best not to piss off the officers. Travel StackExchange is filled with Q&A’s about how to what to do when the customs officials of various rich countries apply their discretion to deny entry, often for reasons even more petty than having a meme.
American exceptionalism is crazy. US is one of the more abusive countries, not some civilized safe haven of individual liberties.
The only thing it should reflect poorly on is reporters who ran with this fake story for clicks.
As an example of one of those points, the US right to privacy was long considered so broad that it served as the _foundation of the right to abortion_ in the US for decades! By contrast, to pick an EU example, the Dutch right to privacy is so weak that it is quite literally written into the Dutch constitution as “except as limited by law”; in other words, nearly worthless.
To compare them by presence of a Wikipedia page is beyond ridiculous.
Your address and phone number are publicly available with a Google search. I've been stalked and had someone show up at my house after moving (and I have zero social media presence) because, for some reason, my personal info was all online and easily found by googling my name.
People can take a video of you, shame you for some random thing, and have your face and name known to millions by the end of the day.
The NSA can access all your online data and share it with whoever they want. Companies do it on their behalf as well. Cops can dig through your car just by saying it smells funny.
A right to privacy somehow was construed as the right to an abortion. But the right to privacy never meant you have the right to keep anything private. In some other countries, you can easily have your data taken down from public view online and sue (and win against) people who violate that right. That's an uphill battle in the US.
Everyone has the same freedom to use their resources to maximise that freedoms to help with where the fiat meets the nose.
I'm not arguing for any previous arguments here, just want to argue that "might makes right" is a very dangerous system.
Strawman-ing: It sounds like the argument is "might implies right because you must have done something right to get that money"
There's a lot wrong with that. You didn't earn the money often, because inheritance. And we're assuming the "right" things you did to earn that money for capitalism maps somehow to "right" things for humanity, which obviously isn't a direct 1-1.
And imagine that logic flipped: "Less might makes less right" -> "less might implies less right because you must have done something wrong to not have money". Like, say that to a 5 year old, poor descendent of slaves.
But again, I'm strawman-ing. Just wanted to get that out there.
Comparing privacy laws by example is beyond ridiculous. And there are big cultural differences what "privacy" entails.
If anything censorship and extensive government oversight of peoples lives in EU and UK is far less controversial so there isn’t much of a push back. As you can see every time this comes up on HN where people in the EU defend it.
They are controversial with the public. They are not controversial within the government.
With certain subsets of the public sure.
Similar response to the “give your passport to shady company” act in the U.K - the majority of the public support it.