> I was blown away by the fact that I could log into a US government website, register with a burner mail, pay 2 bucks with an anonymous gift credit/debit card and get a scanned copy of his death certificate in my email. And I didn't even have to provide his passport/id/anything. Just his name.

Death certificates become public record after a period of time, depending on the state. In some states it’s 25 years after death, some more, some less.

https://www.usa.gov/death-certificate#:~:text=Can%20anyone%2...

As far as I can tell this is the same as in the EU: Death certificates can be publicly accessed for a fee after a period of time defined by member states.

I found some comments saying death certificates in the UK could be accessed as early as 6 months in some locations.

So I don’t see this as the US being uniquely terrible on privacy. This is how most of the western world does it. You just had experience with the US and assumed EU was different.

> we never really found out what had happened(to the point where we never really got any definitive proof that he had died).

I’m sorry for your loss, but doesn’t this imply that the US did do a good job of protecting his privacy? It wasn’t until the time limit had passed that you were able to find the death certificate.