Earlier quoted context omitted.
Description of my life. I was telling people for years what is going on, not from position of daydreaming, but what I would be able to pull off. I got back everything from tin foil hat to "I have nothing to hide". Snowden changed that and I am gratefull to him for exactly that... And for one more sentance, that is a work of pure genius: “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing…
> “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” I find this sentence interesting because it is very specific to the American public. I am European and personally I care a lot more about privacy than free speech, and America's obsession with free speech boggles my mind. It might hav…
No Western-style democracy observes a right to absolutely unrestricted freedom of speech, because it conflicts in obvious ways with other rights. We cannot, for example, incite people to a riot, or yell fire in a crowded theater, or go on the radio and accuse our boss of murdering children. The restrictions against Holocaust denial in Germany (for example) aren't different in kind. Europeans enjoy broad freedom to publish whatever they want about their government, critical or otherwise.
This is in stark contrast with China, Russia, most countries under some form of religious rule, and most dictatorships, where criticizing the government will get you tortured to death or sent to a labor camp at worst, and severely fined and blacklisted from government service at best.
The "median Western European" may have a more nuanced view on the right to free speech than the median citizen of the United States, but I'd attribute that to a superior education system and decades of trying to undo structural economic injustice rather than a cultural divide (which is complete nonsense, honestly).