If you look back at search results for that term, there are now laughable comments particularly by Microsoft that your data is safe in the US because even the Patriot Act requires warrants right? Little did they know...
I'd argue that a company that explicitly agrees to work with the NSA, for example by handing them over Windows security holes to be exploited by the NSA (and potentially other hackers), knows exactly the kinds of things that are going on.
The irony being that since the servers are "not located in the US", they are even more easily targeted by the NSA since the NSA considers the rest of the world to be sub-humans without any rights.
And this creates a genuine difficulty for EU businesses, because it's no longer credible to claim that you thought a US business was compliant because of safe harbour arrangements. It may therefore not actually be legal under European laws to export personal data to those US businesses any more. If any European company did so, and as a result there were negative consequences for the subject of the data, that could lead to a nasty lawsuit for the company that did it, even if their actions would have been considered reasonably diligent because of safe harbour a few years ago.