That said, it’s not all roses in the US. There are many backdoors the government uses like issuing subpoenas to tech companies to get their data. Sometimes (like the notorious NSLs, National Security Letters) the order is secret and the company can’t even talk about it. This is also why the Snowden revelations were significant— arguably what the NSA is doing (mass, untargeted surveillance) is illegal, but so far (iirc) courts have said nobody has standing to challenge it. Various groups are still trying.
The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal.
Still they try because there is always an exception that allows breaking those laws.
Chat control isn’t something the EU invented, they tried to implement CSAM in Apple devices and the whole chat control thing in the EU was heavily lobbied by Thorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)
> The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal.
I don't think they do. They have constitutions that guarantee "Freedom of Speech" or "Expression," but don't define those terms in any way. I don't know that any of them lack legally prohibited political speech laws.
I feel the US was the origin of this "Hate Speech" nightmare that has been growing to encompass all of Western politics over the past 30 years, but the irony is that you can do slurs all day long in the US, to anybody you want, whenever you want. You will probably be ejected from the premises, though. In the US, the speech still has to be connected to a crime. In the EU, the speech itself is the crime.
That's because the US has the convenience of owning the megacorporations that control every facet of our lives. The government doesn't need the ability to restrict your speech and monitor you if FAANG happily do it for them.
The 1st, 4th and 5th have been repeatedly and systematically weakened both in practice and through the courts though.
1st - gag orders issued by secret courts, no trial, no apeal, can't even talk about it (can't even talk about the gag orders themselves, basically a gag order on a gag order). We only found out about it because Yahoo (out of all of them, the least you'd think would fight this) briefly tried to fight it. All the top CEOs got them. Yahoo briefly tried to fight it at some point and some court docs got out, but it wasn't much.
4th - multiple cases of confiscating cash without a trial, probable cause or anything of the sort. It's called "civil forfeiture", it's been done at both state and federal level, and it's so insanely full of mental gymnastics that at some point they tried to argue in court that "the person is not suspected of anything, the money is suspected of a crime". Bananas.
5th - there's a case where an executive was caught up in some investigation, and she was being held in contempt (jailed) over not divulging an encryption password. I haven't checked on the case in a while, but the idea of holding someone in contempt for so long defeats the purpose, and the idea of having to divulge passwords vs. having to provide a safe combination was apparently lost on the courts.
You might not like this example, but the relatively recent evolution of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, significantly strengthening gun rights, is the result of many impassioned, dedicated groups, lobbying the public and the government for decades.
The lesson is: stay active, stay vocal, stay in the media, and prepare for a very long haul. And file lots of lawsuits challenging everything!
I think it's hard to end though. It would require basically re-doing the ECHR and probably other EU treaties, and that just isn't going to happen any more than anyone will make amendments to the US constitution.
Ultimately the US government's key escrow fixation largely faded away, and it was never clear whether it would stand up in the courts, but it still shows up from time to time.
It's quite possible that this would conflict with the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (the Lisbon treaty) if passed, too; for a prior example see the defunct data retention directive, which was nuked by the ECJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
I'm not convinced the US will even have fair elections a couple of years from now. Do those amendments really matter, when those in power are doing everything they can to break down the rule of law, and turn the country into yet another autocracy?
EU may be sliding towards feudalism, but America is definitely farther down that road than we are. Current administration's relationship with tech billionaires is a concrete proof of that. I have no faith in politicians of either part of the world.
It takes a firm believe to still pretend the bill of rights would be adhered to. You have a convicted criminal as president with ties to child traffickers, taking foreign bribes on live TV, scamming voters with crypto, while punishing universities for teaching the wrong things and imprisoning people without due process for having the wrong opinion.
All the while SCOTUS elevated him above the law; now he actually could shoot somebody on fifth ave and he’d really not have to fear prosecution.
From what I've seen, the US also has a more "rebellious" culture than the EU, for lack of a better term; laws are viewed less as an absolute and the population is far more willing to break them if the consequences are perceived as minor. This is bipartisan; examples that come to mind include: electing a convicted felon, helping illegal immigrants stay in the country, and going 10 over the speed limit.
