At a 2013 technology conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tried to reassure the audience by saying that he was ‘pretty sure that information within Google is now safe from any government’s prying eyes’.
A more accurate statement might have been: ‘Your data is safe from governments, except for the ways we don’t know about and the ways we cannot tell you about.’ The other thing Schmidt didn’t say is: ‘And of course, we still have complete access to it all, and can sell it to whomever we want… and you will have no recourse.’