So, even if the government doesn't know what your online pseudonyms/usernames are, they can contact those services with traffic data to narrow it down.
You can downplay financial records if you want, but phone and finance records are the number one lead generation sources. And the government runs a "total information awareness" system for financialized behavior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fincen that no one seems to care about, while they all worry about the government seeing their search logs for porn and cat gifs.
Here's a question for you: How many Americans were mistakenly put on terrorist watch lists because of information web service providers collected vs information from FinCEN?
Look, I'm not saying, don't worry about your data in cloud services being subpoena'ed. What I am saying is, worry more about the already existing firehose feeds the government gets from ISPs, phone companies, banks, and airlines. The government has to have a warrant or NSL to get Google to hand over data on selective accounts. But do you know what is going on in FinCEN and classified FBI and NSA monitoring with those other organizations?
The attention span of today's geeks seems woefully narrowed to only the stuff they know: social media cloud stuff, and precious little is said about the massive monitoring of traditional sources of service information.
>How one goes from the idea that cryptography presents the opportunity for undefeatable privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, etc no matter how much the state is against it, to, voluntary use of Google is the death of privacy, I don't get.
For one, Google doesn't offer any cryptography (except HTTPS, which doesn't matter on their side). For the billions that use it, they might have no privacy at all.
What's that hard to understand?
>I also think people are too fixated on Google, when VISA/Mastercard, your Bank, your phone carrier, and your ISP have much longer, more comprehensive, and detailed records on your behavior that the police can, and have, been monitoring far longer and with less oversight.
Because there are others doesn't mean Google is not one of the top offenders. As for what VISA/Bank/etc has, are mostly purchase lists and inferred whereabouts (very crudely). As for the ISP, with HTTPS that most sites use, they don't have much. I don't think they MITM Google, Facebook or your Bank.
Google, on the other hand, with their Search, Docs, Gmail and Android (which also includes GPS location data), has almost everything there is for an individual that uses it.
>Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is not about perfection, it is a value, a gradient, that you strive for.
It's a naive marketing slogans for the press and the daft -- people have got over it for at least five years.