Smaller U.S. businesses fear freeze from EU privacy ruling

&quot;The larger U.S. companies may face a problem of perception that they have abetted U.S. government surveillance. They say, however, that they have broken no laws.&quot;<p>They probably mean to not having broken US laws. However, if they complied to US government requests they have certainly broken laws of several EU countries (at least German ones) and as well broken the Safe Harbor agreement.

It seems the ECJ has plenty of room to invalidate the invalidation [1], but I find this case fascinating in that the courts may be put into an impossible situation of reconciling civilian privacy law against foreign intelligence activities that will likely never formally be acknowledge.<p>My take away was that the main point against safe harbor is that EU citizens have no legal standing or other access to recourse against US companies accused of breaches, so it does not provide an equivalent level of protection as the charter is supposed to provide.

&quot;leaving some U.S. companies concerned that they will be frozen out of the market or replaced by EU competitors.&quot;<p>Let&#x27;s hope so. Europe needs this.

Is anyone even slightly surprised that the actions of the US government would directly hurt US businesses?

&gt; called for a quick fix<p>Can we not do that? I would like a comprehensive reform, not a &quot;quick fix&quot;. If that means US companies can&#x27;t offer their services in the EU in the meantime, so be it. Take it up to the U.S. government and the NSA.

It is weird to have the article call Adobe and Autodesk mid-size companies. In Europe they would be considered giants.

This knee-jerk reaction would directly harm competitive corporations that have already expressed their disdain for unregulated surveillance by American intelligence agencies. Instead of taking this up directly with the American government, of course they would simply go ahead and enforce regulations against private corporations instead.<p>How much manpower and money would be necessary for small companies to make sure EU user data stays in EU servers in an age where big data analytics and storage are crucial to remain relevant.