The U.S. government surveillance program known as Prism, which reportedly collects data from major technology companies, has compelled a European student group to file a barrage of complaints against the companies, claiming the data collection runs afoul of European privacy laws.
The complaints were recently filed in Ireland against Facebook and Apple, in Luxembourg against Skype and Microsoft, and in Germany against Yahoo. The complaints are directed at the companies' European subsidiaries.
The Austrian student group Europe-v-Facebook.org said that while the Prism scandal is playing out in the U.S., "most of the involved companies conduct their business through subsidiaries in the EU in order to avoid U.S. taxes." This means that the companies must abide by European privacy laws, the group said.
This will put companies like Microsoft Skype and Yahoo in a hopeless situation:
Where they are required by US law to deny their cooperation with the NSA - They are required to tell the truth by European law.
There was a simmilar case with Swift some years ago and they solved the problem by moving their headquarters out of the EU and into Swizterland which is not in the EU.
), which means any country in the world could use them to get out of things like this suit.