Why is privacy a subject felt more in Europe rather than the US?

Question

Almost regularly there is news on this or that US (internet) company that must adapt its practices for European customers, since they tend to be too lax with regards to privacy protection according to EU regulations; while from the US perspective there is no problem.

Why is this generally the case? Why do US citizens and companies tend to be less concerned about privacy with regards to their European counterparts? Is it due to some historical event? Or it simply "is" and there is no major drive to change the status quo?

Answer 1

Several EU states endured surveillance by secret police in the past (for instance in Nazi Germany or Eastern Germany), making privacy a sensitive enough topic that constituents demanded strict protection from future large-scale surveillance attempts. In complying with these requests, law makers also ensured that it wouldn't be possible for a State to work around these rules by resorting to the private sector. It was then a natural step to enshrine privacy protection at the EU level.

Another factor that feeds into the attitude is that Europeans have an example across the Atlantic of how things can go wrong when there's very little privacy protection. Put bluntly, it's not appealing.

The US, by contrast, never experienced an oppressive secret police - however close the FBI might have come to that description under Hoover. There are some provisions and laws at both the State and Federal levels aimed at guaranteeing privacy, and some legal chatter about it every now and then, but nothing firmly set in stone (except for medical data, and prohibition from spying on US citizens that has been progressively diluted - or indeed, ignored - since 9/11).

Edward Snowden exposed US government operated large scale surveillance activities, which has heightened public awareness about the issue. But these have never reached the point where there are widespread fears about the police showing up at your doorstep, arresting you, and abusively keeping you locked up or worse for arbitrary reasons. Nor has that point been reached by neighboring states or while under occupation by an enemy force. So things progress slowly.

Answer 2

It's not really a matter of privacy itself being taken more seriously in Europe. It's more a matter of a differing view in the proper role of government. In the U.S., at least traditionally, the proper role of the government has been seen to be more limited than in Europe. While this is perhaps somewhat less true today than 200 years ago, it has still been true to a large degree for the entire existence of the U.S. This includes less government limitations on what contracts private parties (whether individuals, private organizations, or businesses) are allowed to enter into with each other.

Since government limitations on what data Internet companies can store on users (with the permission of the user) is inherently a limitation on what contracts private entities may enter into with each other, the U.S. has been more reluctant than Europe to create such limitations, just as it is with other limitations on private contracts (or private actions in general.)

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When it comes to privacy protection from the government, the situation is different. For example, even in a criminal case where all of the standards for a search warrant are met, you cannot be legally compelled to supply a password or encryption key in the U.S., while in Europe you can be so compelled. In the U.S., this is considered a violation of the 5th Amendment, which, among other things, says that you can't be forced to be a witness against yourself. (Edit: As Dan pointed out in the comments, apparently a circuit split now exists with regard to this in the U.S., so the issue will likely end up being addressed by the Supreme Court.)

In addition to the protections granted in the 5th Amendment, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In general, this bans the government from searching or seizing without your consent any of your property or communications (or yourself) without a warrant showing that you've probably committed or are about to commit a specific crime and specifically describing what can be searched or seized (and this is interpreted by courts to only extend to things which could reasonably by construed to be likely to provide evidence of that specific crime.)

Answer 3

This is largely a cultural difference in the value of privacy with respect to independent companies. The U.S. constitution offers no provisions directly for privacy; it is implied by the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 10th amendments that citizens have some level of privacy from the government. The EU government takes privacy more seriously, and has passed laws that force compliance and don't allow contracts to waive certain rights unlike in the U.S. The U.S. also was founded on a fundamental distrust of government that still exists in some degree today, and that mistrust prevents laws allowing the government to enforce privacy to the same degree.

There is also the matter that the U.S. laws are to some degree outdated with respect to the modern web framework and they aren't equipped to handle scenarios where companies can gather and process the amount of information that they can today. The EU has updated/passed a lot of regulation in the past few years giving them a better framework to handle modern needs with respect to the Internet. Between general incompetence of U.S. politicians and corporate lobbying, it's unlikely they will have any sort of overhaul anytime soon. Additionally, companies have been careful in the U.S. to not allow legal precedent to be set in a number of cases by settling them before rulings can be made.

Answer 4

There's one thing I didn't see in the other answers, that I think is extremely relevant too. These are US companies entering a European domain; this is a foreign entity to them, and foreign entities, even in the US, have a lot more privacy concerns and regulations than domestic entities.

That's not saying there isn't some difference in our laws, but I think that can explain a general difference in opinion for a company like...Google. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., are American companies, so Americans, for better or worst tend to trust them more than Europeans do.

I think in general, as an American and knowing other Americans, if you see a Chinese, Russian, European, or Indian based company, we tend to trust it less ourselves.

Answer 5

In general, Europe tends to have more regulations than the United States in regards to almost everything. This is just one more example of that. There is also a certain conflict in the US between the public right to information and the individual right to privacy. In Europe the latter seems to have firmly won out. In the US the battle goes on.

Answer 6

...this or that US (internet) company... must adapt... since they tend to be too lax with regards to privacy protection according to EU regulations; while from the US perspective there is no problem. Why is this generally the case? Why do US citizens and companies tend to be less concerned about privacy with regards to their European counterparts? Is it due to some historical event? Or it simply "is" and there is no major drive to change the status quo?

I think the other answers are very good and hit the main points. Like M de Bernardy said, US citizens & UK subjects have been relatively more comfortable with mass surveillance over the past few decades because they haven't endured fully fascist or communist systems within living memory. (The Old South was far closer than most Americans understand but its surveillance networks—including many black informants—muddies narratives and isn't part of most people's takeaway.) Mr Deragon is also completely correct that your main focus is on American tech companies. American politicians in both parties are fine with Apple or Microsoft paying less corporate tax so long as they have elaborate lobbying and campaign contribution networks. (Essentially the end of MS's monopoly trouble in the '90s was Orrin Hatch [R-PA] just saying, no, you guys have too much money now and you're going to have to pay into this game or we will crush you. End of.) Until the Chinese prove able to buy them off, the US has no problem outsourcing most of their intelligence work and, as Snowden showed, appreciates its private companies having troves of domestic surveillance that it can either openly or surreptitiously get its hands on, circumventing statutory restrictions on its own work. Like Sen Hatch, European regulators are not necessarily acting out of their constituents' best interests in drafting strong restrictions on market sectors dominated by other countries' companies. Partially they're annoyed with general American snooping on the ruling class and partially they're using what leverage they have in frustration at their inability to tax these guys even after the worst Irish loopholes got closed. The EU doesn't necessarily expect compliance; they expect to be able to pull in hundreds of millions in fines when the American companies inevitably fail to fully comply. They also get leverage in important negotiations with the Yanks and keep data centers in Europe despite the expense of the labor market and getting them carbon neutral.

One thing that no one has talked about yet but should be mentioned is that discussion of privacy in US law inevitably brings in abortion. American law is religiously revertial of the Constitution but the landmark case for its treatment of privacy has become Roe v Wade, which became a massive political football. It defended its invalidation of state-level restrictions on abortion on a right of privacy it imagined was implicit in the 14th Amendment. (In fact, as the lower court held then and the concurrance in Griswold held before, such a right would appear if anywhere in the Ninth Amendment, but even activist Supreme Court justices have been leery about giving it any teeth.) Roe essentially poisoned the concept of constitutionally guaranteed privacy for conservatives all through the growth of the personal computing and the web: Starting with Rehnquist's dissent, plans to overturn it usually come from arguing against its poor reasoning for an implicit right (mistakenly labelled "privacy" instead of the more appropriate "liberty" apparently only because it involves women) rather than its lackadaisical treatment of medical considerations or disinterest in allowing states to choose to protect prenatal life. Things may be changing with Trump being knocked off the socials, the kneecapping of Parler, and Carlson's current claims about the NSA but the originally cynical attempt to peel off some Catholic support from the Democrats ahead of the 1976 and '80 elections really has reshaped the Republican party and prominent 'Pubs can't reach for the most obvious weapon because it's welded to their party's third rail.

So things may improve in the US—especially given how broadly these laws have been copied internationally, how badly Big Tech keeps playing their hand, and how they've just started turning their guns on each other—but it will probably require the continued implosion of the Republican Party and continued grassroots fighting from the people who directed Sanders and Warren against their party's main leadership and donors. It's not likely to improve in the near term.