Yes, but it's a huge and constant fight by people that simply care, and are not always paid to fight this battle.
There is nothing stopping the US or other regions from doing the same, all it takes is people that actually give a damn'...
I have just one thing to say to the Internet generation, and I really hope people start to think about this: when the United Nations Human Rights Manifest was signed (but still not ratified by the US, Liberia and a few other dissident states) in 1948, it was the first time that the whole civilized world agreed that police should not have the right to invade houses or that the government couldn't just open and read mail. Before that, it was something that was not a common right. Now think for a minute how many people had to die a bad death and how many people lost everything just to push those very rights through.... now tell me... what is the difference between a telephone call and a skype call again... what is the difference between a letter and an e-mail again... whatever anyone says, this is the human rights fight of this generation, and it has to be taken seriously, because things can easily take a turn for the worst. It took less than 5 years in pre-WWII Germany to go from a new and fresh democracy to the worst dictatorship in history of mankind. If you let them tell you that everything is just fine and that you have nothing to fear, that you're safe, that's when you start to really panic, and how long have they been telling you that? Human rights are eroded on a massive scale, and all the arguments - however carefully and ingeniously developed - that want to treat e-mail different as letters, or VOIP calls different than PSTN calls, or metadata other than close police surveillance, are invalid and should be combated by everyone that has some brain cells left awake in his skull. It's not about having the right to watch youtube or netflix, those are all empty discussions if the basic rights that so many million people died for are kept upright. There is still a huge dictatorial lobby, also in the EU, that has to be fought every single day. Like why are certain countries abolishing free public DVB-T broadcasts and selling that bandwidth to corporations? Because nobody is watching? No! Because by coincidence, the Realtek RTL-2832U is a happy little accident, and the reason why this chip is made, is because of the DVB-T format in those countries. People have to fight for transparency and human rights, even if they are constantly fed with a false feeling of safety. People are so incredibly gullible, even people with a high intelligence, and the Internet as a means of communication (fora, etc...) are incredibly manipulated by task forces that spend their time depicting intelligent people as thin foil hats or spaced out conspiracy theorists.
If there is one thing worth fighting for, it's not the right to watch netflix without stuttering, it's the goddamn' human rights millions of people had to die for before the world saw the necessity thereof. Do you think you are more safe now that governments and corporation systematically store your electronic data, than the jews were whose letters and phone calls were systematically used to send them to the concentration camps? The whole internet data mining situation, especially in the corporate US, is simply unacceptable! The fight isn't over until electronic data rights are exactly the same as rights concerning PSTN phone calls, home searches, and correspondence by letter, it's a simple as that.