>Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged.
And in a glaring act of hypocrisy, David Cameron came out yesterday to extoll how upset he was over the ruling that the lobbying letters Prince Charles sent government members had to be published. What a breach of privacy it was. Can nobody communicate privately anymore?!
Correct situation if you are on the civil liberties and accountable representation side:
Government has no privacy by default. Government is required to defend any need to keep secrets from individual citizens (and other parties such as the media or businesses).
Individuals have privacy by default. Government (and other parties) are required by law to justify any invasion of that privacy.
Practical situation today:
Government keeps secrets by default. Individual citizens (or other parties such as the media) may need to make considerable efforts to force disclosure, which may be denied repeatedly even where there is no basis in law for doing so.
Individuals have little privacy by default. Government (and other parties) routinely collect and process whatever data they feel like with little consequence, with the notable exception of some explicitly enumerated sensitive areas such as religious beliefs or health information.
> Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged.
Yeah, right before grounding any plane that might contain Snowden. In the meantime, France is busy retroactively legalizing the snooping powers of its intelligence service, Denmark is going the same way, and the UK would like to flat out abolish encryption.
Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. The majority of the US political class thinks its a good thing and says so publicly.