People forget that CEOs, politicians, celebrities, and everyone else are people too. Everyone knows what it is like to say something, but mean something else. Everyone knows what it is like to have to clarify what you just said. People who speak publicly, as part of their job, make far fewer errors than us "normal" folk, but they still make errors. When they make a single error, it is perfectly acceptable to raise an eyebrow, but it is almost never acceptable to sound an alarm. Having seen Schmidt speak, both on video and in person, I have no doubt that he'd respond much better to a polite request for clarification than a misguided angry letter.

EDIT: And I don't even think he made that much of an error! The full quote was:

"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."