> People in democratic societies don't have different rights than those under other political systems; everyone has a right to speak freely and expect privacy in their communications, absent very specific situations where there is evidence that what is being discussed is unallowably dangerous to others, i.e. criminal. To tie rights to democracy not only ignores the rights of people in other systems, it makes those rights sound like arbitrary gifts of the government rather than intrinsic features of humanity.
That, sadly, is a uniquely American concept. I fully agree that these truths are self-evident and universal.
But what's interesting to see is people from Europe and Commonwealth nations voting with their feet and deciding that they too want these freedoms (which they are entitled to!). Here in the Bay it seems there's a constant interest from EU nationals to move to America (judging by the volume of applications we get). But I've never heard anyone interested to do the reverse.
Top destination for EU nationals in Academia was... right here in the US [0].
So it does seem these ideals are appealing to the young, educated and smart people in Europe. Interesting to speculate what impact the policies imposed by these non-elected EU bureaucrats will have on this demographic.
[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...