The government has the ability to issue national security letters using its expansive surveillance power granted under section 215 of the patriot act. These als

The government has the ability to issue national security letters using its expansive surveillance power granted under section 215 of the patriot act. These also have very restrictive gag orders against disclosure. Rank and file employees would be unaware of these searches. If a big tech company went full nuclear with their lawyers it's possible that they could have gotten the whole patriot act ruled unconstitutional. But they didn't. They all cooperated. PRISM took this one step further and was a project where google (and everyone else) gave the government direct searchable access to their databases. There is no reason to think this isn't still going on.