Most European nations have long had stronger privacy laws than those in the United States. As a result U.S. Internet companies doing business there–incluiding Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and AOL–have signed on to so-called “safe harbor” principles, promising a European level of privacy protection. Now, of course, it appears they’ve also been providing gobs of data about some overseas customers to the U.S. National Security Agency (see “NSA Surveillance Reflects a Broader Interpretation of the Patriot Act”).

Among other fallout, it’s reasonable now to expect E.U. regulators and customers to go nuclear–and U.S. companies to face tough sledding ahead.

via NSA Data-Scooping: A Coming Backlash in Europe? | MIT Technology Review.