> if it was decided by the executive or legislative branches that it was absolutely essential that Facebook turn over all their data to the intelligence agencie

> if it was decided by the executive or legislative branches that it was absolutely essential that Facebook turn over all their data to the intelligence agencies, due to the need to crack down on dissent, social unrest, then, yes this could be bad. This already exists, it's called the patriot act. Snowden showed that the US government has its hands in facebook and google's data. And you may have heard of the foreigner who got refused entrance on US soil at the border based on their facebook private messages. > It's interesting to note that so far FB and Google haven't suffered massive data breaches. More like such data breaches have not had much if any media exposure. IIRC gmail suffered a few of those from China and Russia alreaddy, and both facebook and google were tapped by the US agencies.