No, the Democracy Index also makes its evaluation on the basis of Civil Liberties. To quote from their report:

> All democracies are systems in which citizens freely make political decisions by majority rule. But rule by the majority is not necessarily democratic. In a democracy majority rule must be combined with guarantees of individual human rights and the rights of minorities.

In 2011 the US scored 8.53 in Civil Liberties (out of 10) compared with 4.71 for Russia and 1.18 for China.

All of your cited indexes examine only macro-freedoms, especially the ones that institutions in western societies are generally built upon, while completely ignoring the concept of personal freedom.

Specifically, this 'Civil Liberties' category is only a subset of civil liberties as applied to the inputs of democracy. Most autonomous governments directly attack political free expression, which is what this category is designed to measure. (USG however has become quite autonomous and oppressive while allowing free expression. This takes longer to develop, but is much more robust)

As for examples of civil liberties that are not reflected in this category - presumption of innocence, equal protection under the law, the sorry excuse for "due process", unintelligible and de-facto private laws, rights granted by the "supreme law of the land" being somehow mostly inapplicable, excessive punishment, drug laws and every other area where government meddles with individuals' lives to make society "better". Your standard Frito Pendejo celebrates his "excellent" rights while simultaneously cheering on fascism against those in positions of actually requiring said rights. The fact that the process is democratic is of little importance when the results are poor.

> USG however has become quite autonomous and oppressive while allowing free expression.

Again, completely unsupported.

> As for examples of civil liberties that are not reflected in this category [...]

Did you actually read the report? Equal protection is an explicit criterion. The ability of citizens to successfully petition the government for redress of grievances is another, which addresses many of the others (as well as an independent judiciary).

HackerNews used to be a place where most people had an informed perspective about how the world really works. I'm sad to see the rise of useless naive indignation that plagues so many Internet discussion boards. There is plenty to criticize the US for. The Kim Dotcom case looks pretty unreasonable from what we know. The jump from there to the US being Russia or China is absurd and betrays sloppy and/or uninformed thinking. The fact that I even have to argue this point and spend time digging up sources that state the obvious is disconcerting, and I regret the time I've wasted on this thread.

I'd skimmed the 'Democracy Index' report. It addresses equal protection, but the problem is the narrow context of the question. Asked in regards to political expression, I think it'd be hard to say that the equal protection in the US is anything but good. AFAIK we don't really have retaliatory crimes going uninvestigated. However, when we widen the scope to include things like government criminality, SLAPPs, copyright infringement, drug possession, and general sentencing it's pretty hard to say that parties of differing political/social/economic standing receive similar redress.

The freedom to help condone whichever big-money candidate sweet-talked me the best or to write in the name of someone who definitely won't be elected just isn't worth that much to me, especially when it fits into continuing the status quo oh-so-well. I'd probably miss it if it were gone, but as it stands I'd much rather have laws be understandable by everyone, and minimal penalties when they've not been violated (even when one ultimately prevails, time wasted by the system is a penalty itself). These are fundamental parts of the rule-of-law that are sorely missing.

And ah yes, the good old argumento-ad-declaring-a-viewpoint-as-part-of-the-downfall-of-hackernews-um. If something is disconcerting, that may mean you need to examine your assumptions. In actuality, you're making "obvious" arguments because you're ignoring the (quite insightful!) point that was made with regards to individual freedom, while arguing against a straw-man of institutional freedom.