Currently the US-of-A believes that US laws _always_ apply, no matter where. However that doesn't jive well with EU privacy laws. For example the easiest way to

Currently the US-of-A believes that US laws _always_ apply, no matter where. However that doesn't jive well with EU privacy laws. For example the easiest way to comply with the German privacy laws ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz ) is to host inside of Germany itself (See also: AWS eu-central-1). Microsoft has been busily fighting this notion ( http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2015/04/09/our-legal-challenge-to-a-us-government-search-warrant/ http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2015/04/09/our-lega... ) for a while now. Basically all the tech companies are waiting to find out what happens ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/us/politics/apple-and-other-tech-companies-tangle-with-us-over-access-to-data.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/us/politics/apple-and-othe... ) because it means the difference between "US Law applies everywhere" and "US companies can comply with foreign data protection laws". Unfortunately these two things are mutually exclusive.