US based password/identity management is now dead.
I agree that this double speak from US cloud tech companies and the government is putting US cloud vendors into peril. But seriously, the US cloud might be like the dollar. It's not perfect, but it is a known refuge.
There is at least some amount of oversight, however weak, if you have US customers - I would assume that all foreign rivals are actual targets.
Who said it's better to be an American ashamed of our foreign policy than to be a victim of it?
Anyone here feel their government is more trustworthy than the US's???
Now, in many countries even local citizens in the local cloud have no legal protection from the state, or legal protections notionally exist but don't really impede the security services at all. (By all accounts the PRC is one of these.) But this is where motivation comes in to it. Many people outside the US have good reason to fear their own government more than the US'. In that case you could be better off trusting your data to the US cloud, even if it means you're trading away some real legal protections in exchange for getting getting your data out of the hands of a local government which is motivated to work around those protections to get at you. If your data also has no real legal protection locally then it's an easier choice. The problem is that some people - for example, non-US companies with interesting commercial data and US competitors - may in fact have more reason to fear the US government than their own.
I doubt that.
US government intelligence gathering within the US is being reported on right now and controversial because their are strong expectations and at least some legal restrictions that suggest that such surveillance is exceptional.
But if you think keeping your data overseas means that the foreign intelligence gathering apparatus of the US government isn't going to get at it, then you may have failed to think things through clearly.
And of course, that's the wrong question anyway. You shouldn't trust anyone with access to your data, which is why strong cryptographic techniques are especially important for cloud-based activities.