EU enshrined privacy in its charter of fundamental rights. GDPR was and still is a major protection.

US, from its biggest companies to the whole of Silicon Valley culture has done the exact opposite.

Within the EU, multiple attempts at pushing changes in opposition to this have been proposed, debated, voted on (and rejected), as democracies do.

Not perfect, but when you come down to laws, EU bureaucrats gave EU citizens article 8, US gave them the CLOUD act.

> Within the EU, multiple attempts at pushing changes in opposition to this have been proposed, debated, voted on (and rejected), as democracies do.

If 51% of people want to do something wrong, they should do it to themselves and leave the other 49% alone. Democracy is not an excuse for doing the wrong thing and going "oh well, guess people want it".

> EU enshrined privacy in its charter of fundamental rights. GDPR was and still is a major protection.

GDPR does not protect you from governments snooping on you. The same way it does not stop governments from collecting data on you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

It sometimes even forces governments to collect more data on their own citizens like in Romania.

The only difference between the US and the EU is that the EU has somehow managed to convince a bunch of useful idiots (not saying that you are part of it) that it is better than the US when in reality its the same shit just with a different color and smell.