US spying in Europe will backfire on Google and Facebook

The Christian Science Monitor said on Friday that the US spying could lead to tough new laws that put American technology companies in the tough spot of being forced to defy either US authorities or the European Union. The paper quoted a new report by the French newspaper Le Monde as claiming that that the National Security Agency (NSA) collected data on 70 million French phone calls and text messages from Dec. 10, 2012 to Jan. 8, 2013, while other reports said that the NSA has monitored personal phone calls by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Premier Enrico Letta. The revelations have revived EU legislation that would force companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, or Google to get approval from European officials before handing over data on European residents to US law enforcement – or face enormous fines, the paper added. If enacted, there could be sticky situations where "a US company would be faced with a valid request for data by US authorities and the EU is saying they can’t supply it," said Christopher Wolf, a global privacy law expert at Hogan Lovells in Washington.