And yet they keep saying Europeans have nothing to worry about and they shouldn't fear the Patriot Act if they keep their data on the servers of US companies. Yeah, right.
hastur 18 minutes ago | link [dead]
US Govt can force a US-based company to handover customer data from an overseas data center.
So no, you're not safe in London.
[In fact, due to close cooperation of intelligence services of the five Anglo-Saxon countries (Five Eyes), you're not safe in any of them if you want to do anything that challenges the interests that US law enforcement and intelligence protect. That includes any activity that would unsettle current intellectual property and copyright regimes, strong political activism, completely free speech, etc. If you're a web startup, that of course applies to your users too.]
Note to hastur: it looks like your snarky one-liners got your account auto-banned, so now nobody can read your comments that are actually interesting.
And yeah, snarkiness seems to be my involuntary hallmark... ;)
The US government generally considers anything on US soil, owned by anybody, to be their purview... but in the Megaupload case they siezed servers and data in new zealand, along with the USA.