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Mandatory data retention is a current issue in Europe, too. There's a EU directive that requires member countries to implement data retention laws. It's one the biggest public issues in German telecommunication politics (way bigger than net neutrality, for example) and one of the biggest public issues in the overall field of privacy.

More info if anybody is interested: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/46/42/lang,en/

And an article from the Irish Times titled "German evidence shows no justification for data retention": http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0617/1224299068085.html

Yes I think this is important, the law mimics laws in Scandinavia or Australia. Technically, it will be a blacklist for IP-addresses somehow connected with child pornography. I think it is a good sign for Germany that the debate is lively and the resistance rather fierce.

The German speaking Internet is all at rage:

There are songs on youtube, comedians are taking rhather hard on the minister, protest is organized on the net and in Berlin in September

The law is badly made, probably highly ineffective (just take a DNS-server outside of Germany, use Tor, whatever) and may have far reaching consequences. The resistance against it, however, is well organized and and I am rather optimistic that might have some effect, at least in the long run.

>Nobody moves out of the UK due to surveillance, ...

Not yet!

On the other hand I don't trust my German fellow citizens with regard to preventing excessive surveillance either. Our minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble got shot once by some nutcase and has been paralyzed since then. I wonder whether he can separate this personal mishap from his political position. He has also shown some tendency for somewhat drastic measures regarding surveillance and terrorism.

Fortunately not all seems to be lost. Today we had a street protest against excessive surveillance:

http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/Berlin

If you're a resident of Germany, please help challenge this soon-to-be-law in the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht): https://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/51/70/ Deadline for sending in the power of attorney (Vollmacht): Monday, November 19.

My point is, concealing the facts generally implies that there is some fear of the popular reaction.

I'd mod you flamebait but I'd rather bite.

What you don't mention is that Europeans still have a say in political decisions. In the case of the german data retention law proposal, here is a page full of possibilities for Germans to stand up against the new trend of privacy restriction.

And about the "trojan buzz", enjoy your old news! German politicians still seem quite impressed by big brother, saviour and winner of wars USA and would really really really like to copy all of its political and economical success. And so they cry their fads.
But did you notice that constitutions in Europe actually mean something?

Politicians can come up with the wackiest of ideas. That way they give me a chance to be an active citizen. Maybe you should stop moaning and make use of your bloody rights!

Here the original Spiegel Article(in German, of course).

Information about the draft law and what people can do to prevent it from being passed can be found at the following site:
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/ (also in German)
What's scary is the range of people that are supposed to get access to the collected information,
it's not just the police but also "Nachrichtendienste" (news agencies!?) and "ausländische Staaten" (other countries, apparently any that ask)

I'm guessing this is caused by some lobby/bribe action of organizations like the RIAA/MPAA.
I can't think of one good reason of why this might be good for anyone,
criminals will just use bot proxies or other means to bypass the tracking/collection and in the end
it will just be the honest people that get f#cked because with general government incompetence
the the data will end up in the criminal's hand's and used for who knows what.