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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Europe is no longer a place that should be considered ideologically compatible with the United States. At best neutral. The US should abandon NATO and downgrade relations with the continent.

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You can’t seriously be proposing that the United States respects the privacy of its citizens more.

We have constitutional barriers that would obstruct something like this.

As a US citizen, I have to say that you are completely mistaken. The US is a privacy hellscape.

Last I checked the US isn't trying to force legal backdoors into encryption which puts it firmly above the EU.

Source: US citizen which gives me special knowledge

Because US already has it. Did everyone forgot about Snowden? They have the ability and they are actively using it for at least the past 12 years. There is a reason that every major cloud provider is building a European sovereign cloud now, because US services are not trusted.

There are also constitutional barriers to lie under oath, e.g. about spying and collecting data on US citizens, but those barriers seem very ineffective (I'm talking about the 2013 congressional hearing involving James Clapper).

I see no clear indicator that the situation has improved since.

It's all relying on US tech and there is strong lobbying coming from the US for such solution. US has already deployed mass surveillance, major difference is they did it without telling citizens.

There's no one solid "Europe", there is a bunch of countries that are farther from each other than states in US.

E.g. what do Spain and Poland have in common?

Obviously you dont know anything about Europe. In the 90's there was a huge migration of Polish people and you know where they migrated mostly? Spain (and Italy). And you know what?, most of my friends during that moment were from Poland (incredible good and educated people to be honest)

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