Comment Re:Maybe, maybe not. (Score 4, Insightful) 749
If the company has access to them and the ability to procure them, what does the physical location of the records or their headquarters matter?
Because they are storing someone else's data. That someone else (and their locally stored property) should receive the full protection of their local laws when dealing with a local subsidiary of an international company. This is not an embassy, it is not considered a territorial extension of the United States. The server is owned and taxed as Irish property. It should require an Irish court order to forcibly extract data off of it, same as it would taking letters out of an Irish safety deposit box (even if the bank had an American presence).
Would we be comfortable with courts in China being able to subpoena any US held data from companies with a Chinese presence? "Sorry Yahoo but as part of your incorporation in China we need you to produce any emails from the personal accounts of Boeing employees held on your US owned servers."