Human Rights
We have human rights laws
I wouldn't say the activities are comparable on either side, but I would recommend you trust not too much in the UK and US application of Human Rights.
In the UK, the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA) declares you guilty by default if you cannot decrypt information when so ordered. This makes experimenting with crypto very dangerous for the lay person and provides a legal coat hanger for whatever the state wants to hang on you as you are by default guilty, with a need to prove your innocence. In addition, the UK is paying less and less attention to Human Right no 12, the right to privacy - I trust I need not expand on that. Having said that, if you ignore its complicity in what the US has gotten up to in the last decade and a half or so, the UK is still in reasonably good shape compared to the US.
The principal issue with the US is their approach to law as it takes the letter of the law rather than the intent. Simplified, if the law says it's a criminal offence to kill someone with a lead pipe, you will walk out a free man with congratulations of the Court if you can prove you used an iron pipe instead. Being that literal means you can never 100% close loopholes unless you produce laws that are (a) unworkable and (b) not accessible for anyone but a lawyer. Thus, if the law says it's illegal to torture on US soil, moving the entertainment to Guantanamo Bay makes it a-OK despite it being just about the coarsest act ever committed by a Western country. If the law prescribes a fair trial (another Human Right), extraordinary rendition is honky-dory as long as the victims never set foot on US soil itself. And as for claims of being a "democracy" - life's too short to go there.
If you want a short, sharp indication of how "humane" the US is, it may be worth knowing that the widest supported Human Rights treaty, "Rights of the Child", has been signed by all but two participants.
They were Somalia .. and the US.
I rest my case.