I'd wager that the UK is a little more extreme than most European nations with respect to privacy, at least as described by German and a Dutch friends of mine.
I believe that the American conception of rights is quite distinct from the European one. In the US, the rights outlined in the constitution are independent of the state, which was engineered as their guarantor. These rights restrain the state, and ought ostensibly to be universally applied, but offer no guarantee of service beyond the securement of those rights, and provision for the common defense.
Conversely, European rights seem to be hard-earned privileges or guarantees on quality of life that have been extended to the people by the state. These rights can directly impose duties on either the state, or certain members of the population (I.e. employers).
Functionally, they're pretty similar day to day, but European-style rights benefit from flexibility, but are also much more likely to be subject to provisions or restrictions such as laws around speech, in part because they're closer to a negotiable agreement between the people and their government, as opposed to some inviolate universal law which requires extreme measures to actually amend.
Europeans generally seem to have a higher quality of life, and are afforded better care and services by more broadly competent governments.
They have superior labor protections. I wish we had some of them. I'm not convinced they have more rights, as I would define them.
The US also has a weird dichotomy between rights against the state, which are plentiful (i.e. Bill of Rights) and broadly stronger than anywhere else in the world, and a lack of rights against other citizens or corporations, where they are weaker than the rest of the West.
So you get obnoxious Home-Owner Association rules when you buy a house, you get unions (your right to freely associate and organise with others) curtailed and destroyed, you get no meaningful privacy protection against scummy companies vacuuming up data (e.g. Equifax)
That's true. The US has a lot to work on, and there are trade-offs to be made before we achieve a proper balance. I'm personally quite happy to be in America, and it would take a lot to get me to consider living in a more paternalistic European society, even if it left me better off. Others wouldn't make that exchange, because they have little use for the more absolute liberties we have stateside.
Europeans have the right to free speech, to protest, to assemble (covid excepted), etc.
What they don't have is an army of low paid people, who have no choice but to deliver services cheaply to those who can afford it. I suspect many in America like this part of "capitalism".
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reply to effie below as I've talked about something that the HN police don't like and have the fake "you're submitting too fast".
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It's a reasonable point, but as you say they have some protections, and this enables them to refuse low pay and bad working conditions, up to a point.
Also although all human life has great value, we are comparing immigrants (and agreeing they have better protection) to citizens in the USA, who have weaker protection.
Actually we have those! Cheap migrant workers from eastern Europe make lots of things move here but their choices are limited. We have protections for them at least on paper, and together with low pay that's still better for them than staying home. Most importantly, (I think) they can (with ordinary medical insurance) go to a doctor for an exam or medicine without getting charged thousands of dollars.
The real difference is how the citizens are protected. In Europe, citizen is treated as human regardless of how much money they have. In U.S. this doesn't seem to be so. The money is more important.
I believe that the American conception of rights is quite distinct from the European one. In the US, the rights outlined in the constitution are independent of the state, which was engineered as their guarantor. These rights restrain the state, and ought ostensibly to be universally applied, but offer no guarantee of service beyond the securement of those rights, and provision for the common defense.
Conversely, European rights seem to be hard-earned privileges or guarantees on quality of life that have been extended to the people by the state. These rights can directly impose duties on either the state, or certain members of the population (I.e. employers).
Functionally, they're pretty similar day to day, but European-style rights benefit from flexibility, but are also much more likely to be subject to provisions or restrictions such as laws around speech, in part because they're closer to a negotiable agreement between the people and their government, as opposed to some inviolate universal law which requires extreme measures to actually amend.
Europeans generally seem to have a higher quality of life, and are afforded better care and services by more broadly competent governments.
They have superior labor protections. I wish we had some of them. I'm not convinced they have more rights, as I would define them.