I'm not understanding how these two things are different for the purposes of this discussion: - The government asks for data on an ad hoc basis, and 3rd party

I'm not understanding how these two things are different for the purposes of this discussion: - The government asks for data on an ad hoc basis, and 3rd party providers trip over themselves in an effort to comply. - The government gets a firehose of data for all customers of 3rd party providers. It doesn't matter of the NSA is data-mining your SkyDrive, or the the local sheriff's office gets your SkyDrive data by just asking (i.e. without a warrant). Either way, your data is less secure when it's stored with a 3rd party provider than it is if you keep it in your own home. When it's in your own home, law enforcement needs a warrant, and spy agencies need to physically send someone to bug your home. Either way, the bar has been raised to getting access to your data, so at the very least they will only access your data if there is a real reason to, and there will be some amount of oversight[1]. [1] Maybe not external on the spy agency side, but presumably orders to send people in to bug a home get more scrutiny, if for no other reason than the fact that it costs more.