This story is a smoke screen. The government in general - that is, some branches of the government starting with the NSA - already obtains all this information,

This story is a smoke screen. The government in general - that is, some branches of the government starting with the NSA - already obtains all this information, and more, automatically from Google, whether willingly or otherwise. No warrant, no specific orders, no nothing. That is part of Edward Snowden's revelations: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_revelations_2013 https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_r... Many large media outlets have basically buried this fact rather quickly after the initial coverage of the revelations, and now we can have stories about how "the keyword warrant" being "one of the more contentious". Sure, it's contentious, since _more_ government bodies get easier access to some of the information, but its infraction of people's privacy is nothing compared to the vast public spying. One should also mention the mechanism of "National Security Letters", in which the executive branch of the US federal (only?) government can compel non-govenrment entities, in secret, to provide them with whatever information they deem necessary for national security purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter