[qwerta]

Europe has similar law (personal data should not leave Europe), but it is not as widely enforced.

Edit: since I am getting down voted let me explain.

> The EU Data Protection Directive requires that personal data a company collects can not be moved somewhere where the consumer will have weaker protections than in the EU.

Practically it means that data can not be moved outside of EU, since they would be under different jurisdiction. For example court in EU must approve all data disclosures. If data are in US the disclosure could bypass courts in EU, there could be even gag order.

Simply put, the EU can not enforce its law in foreign countries. Safe Harbor and similar are nice in theory, but it still does not put them under EU jurisdiction.

BTW: Irish Google got sued already for sharing data with american mother-ship.

[vidarh]

Not quite. The EU Data Protection Directive requires that personal data a company collects can not be moved somewhere where the consumer will have weaker protections than in the EU.

This has required some workarounds, such as "safe harbour" provisions that US companies need to accept in order to receive personal data from EU companies that have collected them from users, which basically boils down to that the US company need to agree to comply with the same basic rules as if the data had stayed in the EU.

End users can pass their data to whomever, whether or not they comply with these rules.

[qwerta]

But US companies are target to NSA survailence and data disclosure, so they can not comply with EU regulations by definition.

[vidarh]

Some have made that argument, but EU companies are also subject to disclosure laws. E.g. Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA) in the UK. So it is unclear whether this would affect anything.

That said, one of the objections that caused the Data Retention Directive to fall in the EU courts was privacy considerations, so who knows. To find out we'll need a lawsuit.

[mapleoin]

So are EU Companies as we have seen...

[jib]

The EU laws allows for data to leave assuming you follow guidelines that makes sure the EU laws around privacy are respected in the country the data is exported to.