the uk has far less individual rights than the usa purports to have
in europe, the law system that is in place has always been towards restricting the individual, ie, if the government has not made something explicitly legal, its illegal.
in america the system of government was set up to restrict the government, ie, if something is not made explicitly illegal, its legal
That is true of certain European countries whose legal systems derive from Roman/Napoleonic law. It's certainly not true of the UK, where the legal system is based on the same Common Law tradition as that in the US, which derived originally from that same Common Law. In the UK, as in the US, a citizen is free to do anything which is not by law prohibited.