Have you been reading the rest of the news over the last year or so? If they want it, they are taking it. That is of course unless governments aren't already sharing.

I had a potential client from the Netherlands (pre-NSA) say no thanks as we are a US based company and he didn't want the possibility of the US government obtaining his data. Fair enough I wasn't going to change his mind. Those who travel frequently internationally know (or should) about a program called Global Entry. Basically let's you go though the border using a machine instead of talking to an immigration officer. At the time it was available to US citizens (with a squeaky clean record) and Dutch citizens. What kind of information sharing must the Dutch be doing with the US to allow us to basically open our borders?

Back to data centers and pretending governments aren't in bed with the NSA for some reason or another and a non US company owns the data center. Who do you think is providing the pipe going into that data center? Almost certainly a US company (or it is 1-2 hops away).

How would this be different in Ireland (eu-west-1)?