> It doesn't matter what country they reside in, if a valid court order is produced it must comply.

A USA court order is not going to get much compliance from a German/Swiss company.

> my understanding is that there is minimal meta data to hand over as the message contents are unreadable without the keys.

That may well be true at the moment (I believe so, anyhow), but it's entirely possible for the USA administration/security services to force any U.S. company to install backdoors and not be allowed to mention it to anyone.