Here's a revealing quote:

"She had two junior surveyors with her, all of them loaded with positioning gear that tied in to Galileo, the European GPS network -- the Galileo gear cost a fortune, but they'd found that their American GPS kit often mysteriously stopped working when they were working on projects in the territorial USA. They'd ordered the Euro stuff from a bunch of anti-globalization activists who'd found that the same thing happened in any city hosting an economic summit. Europeans were more likely to treat infrastructure as sacrosanct, while the U.S. was only too happy to monkey with GPS for tactical reasons."

Emphasis is mine. This is hilarious, I only wish it's intentionally so. First, the EU is for all practical purposes a totalitarian superset of countries. Secondly, France, one of its influential members and a prominent backer of Galileo, routinely does illegal phone wiretapping (if you complain about it, they might stop it, though they won't admit they did it) and holds secret files on thousands of its citizens (anyone remotely important or involved in business, politics and religion is filed by the Renseignements Généraux, which have the right to refuse you access to your own file.) I have no idea how such similar behavior might be widespread in other EU countries, but I'd be surprised if it didn't exist. The UK for instance seems to find it right to videotape its citizens in their every moves (at the envy of the French government, I must add.)

I have no illusion that the free of charge non-military GPS use granted by the DoD by comes with (invisible) strings attached (why else would US tax-payers fund the ability of foreign civilians to locate themselves for free?) But to claim that the EU is more respectful of civil rights than the EU is a total joke. If Europe eventually builds Galileo, no doubt it's to evade American spying and be able to do its own tampering. This is the early 21st century's version of writing pro-USSR SF during the Cold War. Idealistic maybe, but so naive it'll tire fast in the face of history. Galileo's goal is to reduce strategic dependency, not to make an ethical statement. This must be irony.