Wyatt Mason, senior fellow of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, has an article in the New York Times Magazine section where he compares the European response to Google Street View and body scanners to the American reaction. Here’s a snippet of his article:
As to the cultural gulf between Europe’s recent resistance to Google scans and our more intimate protestations, it comes down to different preoccupations in managing the same commendable cautiousness. Privacy laws in Europe have long been stricter than those here, in large measure because of a longer history of intrusion. For nothing can protect a body, whether from a scan or a pat-down, if you have already been made to stand in line and have nothing left, really, to choose.
Read the article in the New York Times.