This isn't just about the NSA, PRISM, etc. It's about surveillance as a business model and as the core purpose of the service. Mass surveillance by advertisers and potentially much creepier private sector entities (astroturf PR firms, think tanks, political parties, ideological pressure groups, insurers, private "intelligence" firms, etc.) is just as violating and potentially worse in the long term than surveillance by the NSA and its kin.

The surveillance-based "free" business model is not our friend.

It does not matter for the OP if Google's behavior is illegal or not. Ethic is independent from law.

OP says "we never saw Google shut down its service in protest"

Do you remember this headline? "Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship" [1]

Google withdrew from the largest, fastest-growing gold-rush market because censorship violated their principles.

Show me one other large company in any industry that has taken a stand like this. Not Microsoft. Not Cisco. Not Bloomberg.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

I suppose, but his arguments are primarily couched in the notion of 'what nefarious thing can be used with your private data', of which Google's committed a grand number of... zero, bad things with. And as far as any evidence whatsoever has shown, they've actually fought FOR your privacy from the government.

Are you trusting them with it? Most definitely. But you're using their services, that trust is implicit. The same way that it's implicit that your bank has your money, or that your phone carrier holds your calls. To ask them to absolve themselves of any ability to snoop is literally to cancel out their reason for existence.

For targeted advertising a real name policy is not necessary.

Snowden never made a claim of illegal cooperation. Glen Greenwald more or less did, but he was wrong.

Yes he has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9L1PD7Cpo

Go to 4 minutes into that video. It's his first interview post-reveal, in Hong Kong.

"Beyond that we've got Prism, which is a demonstration of how the US Government co-opts US corporate power to its own ends. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA, and provide the NSA with direct access to the back ends of all of the systems you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud. And even just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life. And they give the NSA direct access that they don't need to oversee so they can't be held liable for it. I think that's a dangerous capability for anyone to have, but particularly for an organization that's demonstrated time and time again that they'll work to shield themselves from oversight."

Thank you, I stand corrected. That's the first time I've seen Snowden make the direct-access claim. Disappointing to see that it wasn't only Greenwald who didn't read the PRISM document carefully.

The NSA did have direct access to internet/telephone carrier traffic - http://www.wired.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower-klein/

Do we know everything now? Certainly not. NSA has resources that nobody knows about and I'm 100% certain that they have direct access to your data in ways that nobody has ever imagined.

> Google has a direct financial gain in fighting them

Wait, what? Google has a direct financial gain in fighting warrants? How do you figure?

In fighting overbroad warrants, via the National Security Letters. Having NSLs at all significantly increases consumer distrust in Google, and gives them literally zero gains in return. It even costs them work, if you're looking at the small stuff. They don't get anything out of it.

Edit: Clarified what NSL means.

NSLs and warrants are completely different things. Warrants are (or can be) for the contents of messages, and must be signed by a judge. NSLs only cover metadata, and only require an FBI agent's signature. An NSL is a type of subpoena, not a type of warrant.

Also, fighting them takes work too. Much more work (done by more highly-paid individuals) than complying with them. The PR angle may make it a net gain, but I don't think there's a slam-dunk case for that being true. What about consumers who believe NSLs are a necessary tool to fight terrorists?

> NSLs and warrants are completely different things. Warrants are (or can be) for the contents of messages, and must be signed by a judge. NSLs only cover metadata, and only require an FBI agent's signature. An NSL is a type of subpoena, not a type of warrant.

Are we sure that's all NSL's cover? I've been told repeatedly that we can't be told what is required under the NSLs by their very nature(despite being overturned by the Supreme Court). Also, I was under the impression a subpoena also requires a judge's approval.

Regardless, while the two(a subpoena and a warrant) are different, in this case their nature is more than a bit similar, considering subpoenas generally are used to produce information, whereas warrants are to be able to reasonably search for information- which on a server, the two are only differentiated by who is accessing the data and how.

>I've been told repeatedly that we can't be told what is required under the NSLs by their very nature(despite being overturned by the Supreme Court).

NSL power is defined by law, and is limited to metadata, not content. I suspect what they meant is that specific details about whose information is being requested, and how many requests are received, can't be released.

>Also, I was under the impression a subpoena also requires a judge's approval.

An administrative subpoena is a type of subpoena that does not need to be signed by a judge. An NSL is a type of admin subpoena that the FBI uses for national security matters, but the FBI uses admin subpoenas in other investigations, too. Many other federal agencies also have admin subpoena power, and some states grant it to their agencies as well.

My opinion would be: We trust them with our data, if they prove untrustworthy (ultimately) we'd stop using their service/giving them the data they need.

Some already have stopped, of course.

They absolutely do not want anyone asking about user info, or their "store everything here forever so we can index and show ads next to it" is in trouble.

On the other hand, Google doesn't want to piss off the Feds or the Military Industrial Complex. They spend a lot of money and have friends in high places.

Yeah, so basically nothing with respect to the most egregious violation of every single tenet of what the US is marketed to the globe supposedly is!

So, Cool - its great that Snowden hasn't proved shit to make anyone believe the reality is the inverse of what one may think it to be.

Look, the will of our politicians must only be the whole of the Law! So, we're good here....

This might give you a hint?

http://thehackernews.com/2014/05/ios-apple-iphone-data-prote...

Apple iOS 7 Updates Silently Remove Encryption for Email Attachments Thursday, May 01, 2014

From what I'm reading in other places this seems more like an oversight than malicious intent. It was present in iOS 7, then broke in later versions. The e-mails themselves are still fully encrypted, and the iPhone data itself can be encrpyted, the main trouble seems to be what's transmitted during sync, since the actual researcher[1] claims a valid workaround is simply disabling mail synchronization.

1. http://www.andreas-kurtz.de/2014/04/what-apple-missed-to-fix...