I don't see how this is confusing to people. EU and USA laws don't apply to the data- you can't put data in jail and you can't fine data. The laws apply to th

I don't see how this is confusing to people. EU and USA laws don't apply to the data- you can't put data in jail and you can't fine data. The laws apply to the people that control the data. It's not about whether or not the data is stored in a particular locality, it's whether or not there is a person within your jurisdiction that has access to/control of the data (if a server is located in your jurisdiction that implies that a person is around to shut the server down). The big issue is that we underestimate the exposure we have to other countries, especially if you sell a service or ads to foreign entities. The large scale of big websites means that they have people working in multiple countries, so they are subject to multiple sets of laws. I don't really think any American lawyer is arguing in a courtroom in the EU that American laws apply in Europe. But they might be telling a company HQ in the EU to follow American laws or they will shut down their American servers, bank transactions, employees, and supporting contractors/software- all of which are subject to American laws. And if a European citizen travels to the USA, breaks the law, and then travels back to Europe, then an extradition request is valid, and the EU is going to have a tough time if they deny it. The EU won't comply with an extradition request from the USA if the law wasn't broken in the USA. However, I think we often underestimate the amount of exposure that these multi-national companies really have. A company in the EU can't flaunt American laws and tell their American employees to break American laws. So when we find situations where it is literally impossible to comply with both the GDPR and CLOUD act these multi-national companies are going to have to separate themselves. Facebook-EU and Facebook-USA are going to have to have a big wall between them, and there can be an API that lets Facebook-EU users see the profiles of Facebook-USA users, but they will have to be separate entities to comply with each set of laws, and so that American lawyers can't pressure Facebook-EU to comply with something by threatening the American version.