I, too, had dreams of America being a beacon of progress and freedom. It was my nominal homeland but one I'd never experienced. I was proud of it and loved that other nations looked up to us.
But now that dream is dead. We're perfecting the surveillance state I was told would be impossible.
Now I look at Europe, and while I disagree with a great deal of its economic policies, I wonder if the grass just might be greener on the other side.
Which European countries have less domestic surveillance than the US?
Being in the EU allowed this[2] landmark case to happen, which forced the issue of US companies complying with EU privacy protections.
Sadly, I hadn't researched labour-laws in the US (or healthcare, or... well, many things). Seems like a bad deal, now - though a few of my friends have moved out there, I don't particularly envy them.
I'm an American and I find it troublesome and tiresome when people want to adopt the EU's way of doing things, just because that's how it's done over there.
I like that things are done differently in different places. It gives all of us a chance to see what things work and what things don't. The EU's privacy protections are something that I happen to think work much better than ours.
I'd love to see a "Silicon Valley of Europe" emerge as a competitor. We could see how things play out under the different ways of doing things.
Now with Snowden revelations, Obama's expansion of mass surveillance, etc... USA has become the exact opposite to me, they embody a future I don't want to live in.
The worst part is that some EU countries start to become like them because they still think like when I was 16, "USA is progress" => "so we have to do like them" and that's how for eg France adopted "Loi sur le renseignement" which allows gov to do like what NSA's doing.
Now all that I want is finish my CS master and start working for Protonmail,Signal,Tor,Mozilla,Linux,... or whatever company/app/foundation that is trying to protect us.
The thing I'm afraid of is that EU will keep getting weaker in terms of privacy & rights like France because of the "terrorists will kill your children if you don't give us your data" propaganda.
I hope EU will understand that even outside the ethical & moral issues having strong laws on privacy is the only way we can compete with USA tech because it's the only thing we have they don't