Well these companies are giving information to the NSA one way or another. Its a slippery slope argument, but anyone that doesn't refuse to give up the information e.g. Lavabit is complicit in aiding the NSA. Whether they get paid for it or not seems irrelevant.

I think that a reasonable person would consider {Apple, Google, Lavabit, ...} receiving a National Security Letter coercion, and therefore not "complicit".

"Complicit" would be Verizon or AT&T, who to this day still sell phone call metadata to the NSA.

Those companies appear to be hoping the NSA toothpaste goes back in the tube. It won't.

Until they deliver open source client software that uses end-user-controlled strong encryption, they are not making their users secure. But that means putting their users out of the reach of law enforcement, too, and they are scared to do that.

They need to face the choice: Enable real privacy, or lose your customers.

No organization on the planet has done more to get end-to-end strong crypto, as free as is feasible from the influence of certificate authorities, into the hands of as many people as Google has. Google is the Internet's leading deployer and evangelist of forward secrecy and the pathbreaking pioneer in identity pinning.

That's all great, but in terms of actually keeping users' data out of the secret policeman's file, Skype was the first and best, until they got their balls cut off.

Google does an excellent job keeping everyone's data out of the hands of black hats, but that's not quite the same thing as making it impossible for governments to snoop.

Instead of bitching about the NSA, how about a GMail client I can audit, a key exchange I can trust, and routine encryption of all emails.

How about PFS and strong payload crypto for hangouts?

I suspect they are hoping for a scenario where customers will just trust them about government snooping. That would enable their security people to cooperate in situations they deem worthy of cooperation. But I think that trust is gone forever. After all, the courts have ruled metadata collection is legal, so why wouldn't Google cooperate with a legal operation?

The millions they have spent are simply PR and damage control.

I like the idea of the smug superiority of a Bank of America lifer lecturing me about Google's complicity.

Nice comeback.

10-10, shots fired.

That was mean Thomas.