[dogma1138]

It is quite dissimilar in its applications on pretty much everything but national security.

You won't see things like this in the US http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1937_en.htm

Some European countries (such as Sweden and Germany) and the EU as a whole have been stepping up censorship of both social and traditional media these past few years. While it's easy to classify this as just fighting "right wing extremist" much of what is being censored wouldn't be considered right wing nor extremist in the academic sense in any way.

This does not only include traditional "hate speech" like immigrants are bad... mmkay or jews are evil but goes deeper and threatens to classify any criticism of EU policies or anything that causes political disturbance as "hate speech". Whats even more disturbing is that many of these measures are enacted on the back of terrorist attacks in Europe and over the world, but end up being used in combating local political dissent.

If you'll want to make an analogy to what happens in the US then the latest EU movements to cramp freedom of speech are not that different than the massive surveillance program that the US embarked on post 9/11, if anything it is probably worse. While surveillance might have a negative effect on expression and it sure can help breed homogenous group think, dictating what can and cannot be said, and what should are should not be thought is considerably more dangerous.