On the 6th of October 2015, the European Court of Justice will make a decision on whether or not the Safe Harbour treaty between the EU and the US is still valid or not. Logically, the CoJ should decide that the US have never respected any aspect of the Safe Harbour treaty, as the mass surveillance is objectively proven, and as it's proven that most hardware and software from US companies is infected with mass surveillance and cyber warfare elements, that make the Safe Harbour treaty as it exists now, a hoax.
Many US companies know that, and have been updating their ToS and policies, sometimes with new software updates to slip through unnoticed. These contain clauses like "European customers and users acknowledge that they explicitly give permission for the data harvested from them to be stored on US based servers and processed in the US". Examples are Apple, Western Digital, Google, Microsoft, etc... all of which have made such updates recently.
By not accepting these updates, you can demonstrate that you won't just bend over for these corporations that are not even executing a reasonable corporate agenda, but that are just puppets on a string for US military industrial organizations that are arguably not even justified by the US constitution any more, but that have grown so powerful that even the President of the US fears them and refuses to do anything against the massive aggression and belligerent provocations they constantly permit themselves to commit, and force individuals and companies to commit, for no objective goal other than a vulgar display of power.
This goes beyond product or service preferences, this goes beyond politics, this is a matter of helping the companies help themselves to resist the coercion. A discussion on privacy standards and policies as applied by commercial entities is one thing, this is not even about that, this is about whether or not you would allow shady US intelligence agencies to harvest your data, when you don't even trust your own government with that same data. This is about saying no to cyber-terrorism, and about saying yes to your own democratic institutions, because they're the only fair chance you have to keep your civil and human rights safe. The intelligence communities in the EU have been massively infiltrated by US agencies throughout the cold war, and these guys have been continuing their war on the world for the last 25 years. If we're not careful, a situation like in the US might grow, where the intelligence services are definitively above the law, and no democratic institution can control them any more. This would be very bad.
By refusing company policies that support the mass surveillance by the US intelligence community through US companies, and by forcing those companies to store and process your data on European servers, you help those companies escape the undemocratic system they are caught up in, and you provide yourself with a chance that you might have a fruitful dialogue with these companies - through the democratic institutions that deal with that - about how these companies should respect their customers and their customers' privacy and human rights.
The democracy in the US has become so weak that it can't oppose it's own rogue private armies and warlords any more. Let's make sure that this doesn't happen in the EU, and that democracy can prevail.
And let's hope the EuCoJ cuts the cord on October 6th, so that we can renegotiate the whole data mining and privacy thing on a European-wide level. We're the biggest market in numbers of consumers for these products, they should really respect us and respect our democratic rights.
The decision of the EuCoJ will also demonstrate whether or not the CoJ itself is still independent and viable as an organization. The proof that mass surveillance by the US is perpetrated is there and cannot be denied. If the Court decides to not take that proof into account and decide that the Safe Harbour treaty was not broken, that means that they will have made a political decision, which is not what a court should do, in fact, it would mean that the Court would have lost it's legitimation. That would be very bad news for Europe, because it would mean that the European institutions have reached a rotting point beyond what is salvageable, and that a major overhaul of the European institutions is required.
I personally think that there is still democracy in Europe, with both Germany and France having protested the kind of secrecy that is being used by the US in the TTIP negotiations, etc... the European Commission is undoubtedly corrupt beyond salvation, but the member states still seem to have a functional democratic reflex. We'll see, it's pretty important, and it's still a long wait until the 6th...