>> There has to be more to it than that.
>
>Hehe, that's what I thought about your posting when I finally managed to find that meager sentence between the copious quotes. ;-)
>
>I think the mentioned case is quite interesting because on the whole it seems that privacy standards are rather lax in the US (European privacy laws rate the US basically as third-world/unsafe and special vetting is required for exchanging sensitive data with partners in the US, aka the 'safe haven' rule).

Europeans also have better personal encryption protections and gaurantees. European cell phones also [I've heard] will work any place in the world, except the US. US cell phones only work in US. Myth of fact?