[Nemeth]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

However Google has a European HQ in Ireland so has to comply with EU law and America comes under the 'Safe Harbour' agreements http://www.soas.ac.uk/infocomp/dpa/policy/outside/ so any request under the Patriot act would conflict with EU law

Slightly late to the party on this one, but I'll offer some insight since I'm studying the topic at the moment.

Regulatory frameworks in the EU and US are not compatible. The Patriot Act overrides Safe Harbor and major US providers have already said they'll honour US government requests for information on EU data subjects. Yes that would put them in breach of EU data protection laws, but in the US there is no requirement for notification of 3rd party disclosure, so there's no real way of knowing.

Edit: Here's a good article that explains things pretty succinctly.