Imagine a government that knows what you do each day — the people you talk to, the news you read, the places you go. You might think of North Korea or a similar totalitarian regime.
But the US government also has access to such a chillingly clear picture of your life, even without the apparatus of a surveillance state. All it needs to do is ask Big Tech.
And because giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible, there’s little they can do to protect your privacy.
US law enforcement has been increasingly quick to enlist Big Tech’s help in recent years. From late 2014 to early 2024, the number of accounts shared by Google jumped 530%; at Meta (formerly Facebook), it surged 675%; and at Apple, it climbed 621% (fed by an outlier second half of 2022, when they shared over 300,000 accounts).
Collectively, these three companies handed over the details of 3.16 million accounts in just under a decade. This number doesn’t even include data requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which are largely kept secret.
In the last six months of 2023 and the first six months of 2024 (the last 12 months there’s data for), the US government made nearly 500,000 data requests to Google and Meta — more than all the other members of the so-called 14 Eyes Alliance combined.
Google, Meta and Apple form the world’s largest surveillance machine
The US government has recognized three things about the tech giants:
- They all rely on tracking their users to generate revenue — and have become exceptionally good at it.
- They are almost impossible to avoid if you spend any time online.
- Most important, they cannot adopt encryption without undermining their business models.
In 2024, a journalist for The Times of London requested her data from Meta(nouvelle fenêtre) to see exactly how much information it had on her. She got back 20,000 pages, including 20,000 interactions with websites and apps that weren’t even directly connected to her Meta accounts. Thanks to the Meta pixel and data-sharing agreements with banks, health apps, local governments, grocery stores, countless websites, and more, there was no window of her life Meta couldn’t see into — and rarely a day it didn’t receive her data.
This is just one service. Apple and Google hold similar amounts of data — if not more. These companies monitor your entire digital life, compiling a detailed profile that can be handed over at the government’s request or shared with a third party. Essentially, once one of these companies collects your information, you’ve completely lost control of who can see it.
Proponents argue that this is simply standard police work in the 21st century. Most data requests require a judge to approve a subpoena, and Big Tech companies can and do fight overly broad or unjustified requests when they can. However, even if you say that the 500,000 data requests made by the US government all followed due process, there are still hundreds of thousands of requests that were never reviewed by a judge that companies cannot fight at all.
The US government can access this info with no oversight
The FISA allows US intelligence agencies to request user data for national security purposes. These requests are issued with little oversight and cannot legally be refused. Some FISA requests, such as ones made using the Section 702 loophole, are never individually reviewed by a judge at all.
Since 2014, FISA content requests to Meta have increased 2,171%, while those to Google have risen 594%. Apple, though less transparent with its records, reported a 274% increase in such requests between 2018 and 2023.
Big Tech is government’s partner in surveillance
To be clear, we are not faulting Big Tech companies for complying with lawful, limited data requests. Every company must comply with the laws of the land that governs them. However, there are several issues at play. First, law enforcement agencies can use overly broad warrants to get access to reams of sensitive data. These “reverse warrants” (so named because law enforcement doesn’t need to specify a suspect), like geofencing(nouvelle fenêtre) or search term warrants(nouvelle fenêtre), let law enforcement see anyone who was in a specific area or who searched for a specific term in a given time period. Investigations that rely on this data routinely end up falsely identifying suspects, with innocent people being charged with crimes, including burglary(nouvelle fenêtre) and murder(nouvelle fenêtre). And certain FISA requests and national security letters let intelligence agencies or the FBI access data without any judicial oversight.
This brings us to the second problem. Big Tech companies know these abuses happen. Several of them even claim to care about your privacy. However, they cannot apply end-to-end encryption or even minimize user data collection without destroying their business models. In 2023, ads made up almost 98% of Meta’(nouvelle fenêtre)s revenue(nouvelle fenêtre) and 77% of Alphabet(nouvelle fenêtre)’(nouvelle fenêtre)s (specifically Google Ads). While Apple’s ad revenue is relatively small, it’s already larger than Snap or X’s ad revenue(nouvelle fenêtre), and growing fast. To protect their users’ privacy, these companies would have to fundamentally change how they make money, which is not something they have ever shown any appetite for.
Until this happens, they’ll continue monitoring you, collecting tens of thousands of pages of your information each year. And governments will continue to help themselves to this information.
Want to take control of your privacy?
As ubiquitous as Big Tech is, there is another way. Proton is based in Switzerland, a country with strict privacy laws. We cannot act on a data request unless it has been approved by the Swiss authorities. Moreover, Proton’s end-to-end encryption ensures that even if we receive a valid request, we cannot access the content of your messages, files, or other sensitive information.
Our mission is to build a better internet where privacy is the default. We require minimal data to set up an account and offer anonymous payment options. Transparency is key to our approach — we make all our apps open source, share who makes up our team, and publish all government data requests in our Transparency Report (we update this annually in March).
Proton provides a safer alternative, ensuring that your data is protected by design. At a time when marginalized groups and individuals face increasing threats, choosing privacy-focused services has never been more important.
