I think that yapcguy's concern around the data protection laws is not in relation to the contents of the picture collection, but rather the personal data, access logs, etc of the people using Flickr to search and view the collection.
It is a concern either way. His point seemed to be that if it were hosted by an EU entity, then at least it would be bound by EU data privacy laws. I'm not super familiar, but I think those are more strict than US privacy laws, for whatever that's worth.
The governments will be spying either way though, so I personally don't think it's much of a difference.
If the images were hosted in the EU, then there's limitations on what the hosting company can store and process about to visitors. For the USA, there is less protection.
