Tech Companies Help Make NSA Surveillance Possible -- and They Can Help Stop It, Too

[Commentary] Unless Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the rest of the Internet "cloud" providers stop using our data for their own commercial purposes, and start offering users a way to keep it truly private, we have to assume our information has been compromised.

Unless they create a supplemental business model that allows us to pay directly for services in return for genuine security, they are making clear that their commercial priorities trump our privacy. Could Google and the other companies create business models that would work for all of us? They could at least try. They could encrypt all information flow so that even they couldn't read what's stored on their servers and then charge us for using their services. Until it offers email, storage, and other services that are also secure from Google itself -- and there's not a hint that anyone in Mountain View is interested in this -- we should recognize where we exist in the ecosystem: as commodities, not customers.