This is a lengthy article, very shocking in nature!
You think the privacy laws in your home EU country will protect you?
Think again!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-...searchers-say/
A few excerpts from the article:
"European data stored in the "cloud" could be acquired and inspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite Europe's strong data protection laws, university researchers have suggested.
The research paper, titled "Cloud Computing in Higher Education and Research Institutions and the USA Patriot Act," written by legal experts at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law, support previous reports that the anti-terror Patriot Act could be theoretically used by U.S. law enforcement to bypass strict European privacy laws to acquire citizen data within the European Union."
""In particular, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments (FISA) Act makes it easy for U.S. authorities to circumvent local government institutions and mandate direct and easy access to cloud data belonging to non-Americans living outside the U.S., with little or no transparency obligations for such practices -- not even the number of actual requests."
This holds true for requests targeted at non-U.S. individuals and for entire business."
""In the U.S. legal framework, there is a legal doctrine called 'extra-territorial jurisdiction'. This implies that cloud providers operating anywhere in the EU, or anywhere in the world for that matter, have to comply with data requests from U.S. authorities as soon as they fall under U.S. laws," said Arnbak.
"These laws, including the Patriot Act, apply as soon as a cloud service conducts systematic business in the United States. It's a widely held misconception that data actually has to be stored on servers physically located in the U.S."
