I think it's useful on this topic to consider things from the NSA's perspective. If you were them, would you rather have: - direct access to any of Google's ba

I think it's useful on this topic to consider things from the NSA's perspective. If you were them, would you rather have: - direct access to any of Google's backend servers, and the need to decode GFS and BigTable bits to reconstruct a user's data, times 9 companies? - an API provided by the companies that gives you the data in a common format when requested? One is much harder for the government than the other.