It is called a gag order which means that Google cannot admit to it without suffering the full wrath of the government.

Google spies on its user more than the government is accused of here. So what's all the outrage for?

If Google denies it, then that is the end of the subject. They wouldn't lie.

If District Attorney Jeff Rosen says that he's a reformer who is going to clean things up, then that is the end of it. Anyone who's met him can see that he's a nice family guy. He wouldn't do anything wrong. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He wouldn't lie.

If Mountain View Chief of Police Scott Vermeer says that he runs the most professional policing agency in the State of California, as is proclaimed on the fancy email bulletins that his MVPD sends out, then it must be true. He wouldn't lie to us; after all, he's our police chief. If you cannot trust a police chief, who can you trust?

If Wo'O Ideafarm has lots of trouble with the police, then Wo'O Ideafarm must be a trouble maker. He's probably a criminal who uses his civic speech as a cover as he preys secretly upon our nice, safe, orderly (very orderly) community. Jeff Rosen should lock him up for years, just to make sure. It wouldn't have anything to do with Ideafarm's civic speech, of course. Silencing Ideafarm's provocative ideas would just be an incidental benefit.

(Another installment of "The Dumbing of America".)

Wake up, folks. Like all concentrations of power, the Google Corporation has a carefully manicured visible charade and a carefully hidden reality. We need to have a serious conversation about the corruption in our society and about how to raise up our children in to the good, strong adult men and women who will have to do something about the mess that we have left for them.

Edward Snowden should've leaked the story to Google's hometown paper: the Voice. That would've put Daniel Debolt on the map in a big way.

It's obvious that now is the time to finally get serious about encrypting communications. The minor hassle is well worth the peace of mind. As an added benefit, when you encrypt messages on gmail (gpg + imap client), google can't read it and sell the data to advertisers.

Kind of makes the simplicity of paper and pencil more nostalgic. I look at all the items one needs to "secure" their communicatons and it's mind-boggling that people have actually bought into all this.

Google and other companies all spy on us, that is how they make their huge profits, by having their marketing people be able to bring you a boatload of ads on items you have searched on, emailed or whatever.

Don't kid yourself when they say it's free, it's just another way to spy.

Google did and has done exactly as Google told everyone it would do. Google, like a newspaper, dispenses information and sells adds and tries to make a profit. Google hides nothing about their data usage and provides an extremely simply opt out choice.

By contrast we have a federal agency that lies to us about their data collection and when caught with their entire upper body in the cookie jar immediately goes into prevarication hyper drive.

The NSA and TSA have saved us from thousands of plots by evil doers. Would you believe dozens? How about one or two? No, those were probably bogus also. But who cares? These agencies only cost multiple billions to accomplish nothing useful while obliterating our rights to privacy.

Government agencies by nature gravitate towards self serving, self perpetuating entities too big and/or too secret to tolerate scrutiny by the tax payers that fund them.

We strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

Fred, you are like my father-in-law, who died without ever accepting that Nixon lied. I am your local clue. Heed my warning, or remain clueless. The situation in the United States is not what it appears to be. Many people have come to this conclusion. We are right. Get your head out of the sand, take a look, and then let your conscience be your guide. We must do something. Not ME. WE. That includes YOU.

If you are a good, strong, man, you will respond to this call to action.

Regarding Google: Google cheats the people who host Google's ads on their web sites. I was told this by someone who makes his living (barely) from a web site. I trust both his competence and his honesty. If he says it, it is true. Skeptical? If Google doesn't cheat people this way, then why doesn't Google contract for periodic audits by an independent auditing firm to establish that it does not understate the true number of impressions and clicks in order to pay less to hosting web site owners than they are entitled to?

If you want to understand your world, look at how the money flows. If you are not familiar with the basic concepts in the field of economics, and how those concepts apply to current events, then you are not going to be able to pierce the charade.