Perhaps, in the end, the NSA has done us all a favor: they have shown us the fundamental insecurity of giving 3rd parties access to our data. With this move, Google and Microsoft clearly believe that there is demand for privacy, and understand that loss of trust has real, possibly severe, bottom-line implications. They act not of idealism, but out of fear.

The issue, of course, is that if someone wants to talk to me they need to connect with my physical equipment. In a perfect world, people would look me up with a simple IP address, and I'd have whatever services I wish to provide running on various ports from that IP. This machine could be my phone, or a computer I keep in my home. But what's funny is how the modern internet appears to conspire against this extraordinarily simple idea: the first problem is IPv4. There aren't enough IPs to give every internet-connected device a unique IP address, which means NAT, which is, AFAIK, fundamentally insecure when handling inbound traffic. The second is that virtually all internet providers forbid us, in their terms of service, from running "servers". Which brings us to this interesting syllogism:

1. Communication sent through third parties is not private.

2. All internet communication involves a third party

3. There is no private communication on the internet

Until the problems of IPv6 adoption and contractual restrictions on how you use your internet connection are solved, people do not have a viable alternative to using 3rd party hardware for communication over the internet.

Of course, if the "no fly list" is any precedent, the government argument will be something like, "then don't communicate with the internet".