[rjsamson]

Yes - its a bit of a cultural difference - there's is a tendency in Europe for privacy to be a concern regarding private companies, but not as much regarding government, while in the US the opposite is true. There's apparently been some interesting work done on the subject - spent a bit of time on it in an information public policy class in grad school a few years back.

[yuhong]

IMO the truth varies depend on the company and country. For example, Facebook is worse than Google (which fought some of the laws listed, BTW). And China is worse than the US, thus it is not hypocrisy for the US to oppose internet censorship.