Let me expand a bit: I don't think Gabriel is lying/dumb/whatever. However, the statement given essentially comes out to "If we had to, we would fight the good fight and we very strongly believe we would win". I'm all in favor of fighting as hard as you can against broad/illegal/user harmful orders/etc.

But at some point, you will lose, even with the law and moral justice on your side. This is a certainty. Google has lost. Yahoo has lost. Twitter has lost. Microsoft has lost. Contrary to the belief that they are cooperative, they don't want anything to do with anything, and fought with more resources and energy than DDG probably can muster (again, no offense to Gabriel).

Let's ignore for a second whether they have any data to give or not. The point is that at some time in the future you will not just lose temporarily, you will lose in a way that you have to make a choice because yourself/your business/your livelihood and your users privacy.

Believing otherwise makes you naive in my eyes.

Lost in what sense? The question here is whether service providers can be compelled to send data that was never stored on disk to law enforcement. I've seen the news that Skype calls are streamed (in accordance with their privacy policy[1]), and I guess this can be viewed as Microsoft losing, but what about the others?

1. "Skype, Skype's local partner, or the operator or company facilitating your communication may provide personal data, communications content and/or traffic data to an appropriate judicial, law enforcement or government authority lawfully requesting such information. Skype will provide reasonable assistance and information to fulfill this request and you hereby consent to such disclosure."

If the information flows via machines located in the US, NSA can get to the information at several levels.

Then it also depends how much of the law, NSA makes for itself.

Like any HN reader that lived through dictatorship governments can attest, what the law says and the secret services do, doesn't need to be in sync.

And opposing them, well, there are plenty of ways to change people's mind that the right way is to help them.

If this is the direction the government will carry on doing, good luck opposing them just by switching providers, without doing anything more active.

How uninformed and naiv can one CEO be? Did he hear about the secret courts at all?