Microsoft confirmed that data on its European servers can be handed over to American investigators because of the Patriot Act. This can be done without notifying European customers. The EU has what’s called a Data Protection Directive, requiring customers to be notified but Microsoft says that the Patriot Act trumps any European law.

This is interesting to us over here at Marketplace Tech Report because our story airing today is all about Microsoft going along with Chinese law in censoring search results on Bing. Microsoft says it respects the laws of the countries where it does business and follows them accordingly.

Seems like an inconsistently applied standard.