You folks basically mistrust your state completely, which, as it turns out, is pretty much the correct thing to do - the American government and more specifically the organs of government that interact with the citizenry (security services, and especially the police) are demonstrably hazardous to your health.

The thing I see - and, I suppose, the hypothesis I'm testing - is that although J. Random Merkin distrusts The State, there seems to be some weird kind of need for authority emanating from somewhere - hence the cheerful ceding of rights to unaccountable entities.

We don't massively distrust our state in the same way. We do, of course, think that it comprises a pack of feckless grasping chiselling shits. That's a given. But we have this thing where we quietly just ignore things that are too onerous or just a bit silly.

To address your specific point: in the workplace, where the practical application of authority has much more effect on everyday life, we have arranged things so that fair play and decent treatment are (for the most part) comprehensively enshrined in law.

It's all well and good having a pile of constitutional rights, but at the end of the day, man's gotta eat and provide for his family - and in an economy where it's a labour-buyer's market, the playing field is not just not level, it's fucking vertical. And that's just not cricket.