I know you are not supporting the companies here. But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when yo

I know you are not supporting the companies here. But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when you ask for it back, they say: "Well, there was an unexpected event in some sector of the economy which happened behind the scenes which we cannot tell you about. However, what we can tell you is that we were sufficiently pressurized by the government that it was for the good of the entire economy to not give money back to the depositors. Also, you should know that we didn't take this decision lightly but spent many many hours agonizing over it. Please come back in a year. And you might have to take a little haircut on your money as well." Would you say, "Oh, I didn't realize you gave it so much thought. Besides, its all for the good of the economy. Tell you what, why don't you just keep the money?" Does the fact that the decision was actually genuinely hard, or even possibly justifiable in some sense, make you any less likely to get mad? Your justification of the hardness of the decision is a poor excuse, because many of these companies are trustees of a lot of money from the public who have some expectations about how their data should be managed and secured (not explicitly, sure. But they wouldn't agree to random strangers searching through their email if told beforehand, either). To borrow a cliche, great power comes with great responsibility. In the field of software unfortunately the only thing which comes with great power is a tendency to turn a blind eye and simply try and acquire even more power.