Iam lucky enough to be able to spend a fair amount of time in the States, mainly California and Washington.
IMO the Americans have a far better deal so far as being a "free society" is concerned (althou i agree with your point about crossing the road
)
In the UK we currently have a goverment seemingly bent on reducing all our personal freedoms, over 3,000 new offences in 9 years of which 90% are totaly minor/pointless but can "crimalise" a otherwise innocent citizen, who has never, and would never dream of hurting anyone or break any law.
Their intent on introducing ID cards despite the fact theirs overwhelming opposition to them.
Our freedom of information act is a joke, you can find out more about this country using the US information laws than we can our own.
Our right of free speach is not written down in any law passed by parliment, but numerous "anti descrimation" acts that have been passed by parliment are, piecemeal, reducing all our historical rights to freedom of speach.
Despite passing numerous laws concerning firearms in the past 9 years, the amount of illegal arms/shootings has more than doubled, but law abidding citizens can no longer even consider taking up Olympic sports such as pistol shooting. We used to lead in the world in the shooting sports, Mike Gault currently holds the english record for commentwealth medals in any sporting catorgy, yet he has to travel to switerland to pratice. When he retires they will be no englishman/woman who will ever be able to replace him on the world stage. Yet despite this your far more likely now than at anytime before to meet a crimial on the streets with a firearm than you are see a police officer with one.
We have more surveylance camers than any other country in the world.
We have number plate recogintaion equipment attached to a large number of those camers.
We have facial recognation equipment attached to a large number of camers.
We have the largest DNA database in the world.
Yesterday i saw an article on our local tv news that the police are now testing mobile finger print scanning equipment, and can seemingly ask any motorist, who hasnt even broken a law, to be fingerprinted by the scanner. Were told that the data is deleted as soon as its been used, but i bet anything its not deleted from the national database they use to check it, its only deleted from the hand held scanner.
And at the same time we have a goverment that sells seats in our upper house of parliment to anyone who will "donate" a few million to their cause.
Ok you may see more armed police in a US airport than you do here, but how many camers are watching your every move at our airports that you dont even know about. Rember the policeman with his gun is accountable for his actions, this countries camera based survelance has no such safe guards.