Everyone with your attitude sold their stock a year ago when the Fire Phone came out.

The IRS targeting of political opponents killed any chance this will ever happen. There's no basis for anyone to trust any government agency in the US. A few people will still trust blindly, or temporarily while their team is in charge, but it won't be many. Not for a long, long time.

I live in the 8th largest US city by population. Lots of cities have huge problems -- maybe even most of them.

Is municipal broadband only meant for people in a few well-managed cities? What about everyone else then?

One problem with privacy is the lack of real information. I can read privacy policies. I can't be sure companies are following them.

Sure, but how can you be certain that the government is following the published laws? We've seen time and again that they'll simply ignore the law if it's inconvenient (my favorite example is China's state media whining about "constitutionalism", as if rule of law was some radical Western concept), and the US government has repeatedly used the justification of "we can't tell you why we're doing this because it's a matter of national security". If Google were to say "we can't show you our privacy policy because it's a trade secret", then you might have a legitimate comparison to make.

The US Government didn't have to pressure most telecoms to get access to their data.

They're the US government - the pressure is implicit. (And, I suspect, far more explicit than we've been told about, since some of the tech executives involved have made it clear that they can't really go into details about what happened behind the scenes.)

Presumably Google can purchase similar access.

Sure, but again, why is this necessarily more frightening than the government having access? If Google tries to blackmail or murder me, it's still against the law, but government employees have done exactly this with impunity, probably for as long as governments have existed. Again, this isn't an argument that we should trust corporations over governments - I'm simply trying to put our fears of companies like Google in the proper context. (Seriously, what's the creepiest thing that a tech company has done? Facebook's emotional manipulation is the best example I can think of, and while that's pretty creepy, it's still penny-ante stuff. And it's easy to avoid Facebook - I still don't have an account.)

The protection should be from reasonable doubt. If the prosecution hasn't explained their case so the jury understands it, the case isn't proven to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. It is very reasonable to doubt someone when you don't understand what they're saying.

The fact that people tolerate it is unfortunate but not an argument in favor of trusting corporations. We've already seen that corporations have far worse ethics and the only thing which keeps them from behaving even worse than a government is that they have less power. They do their utmost to exploit anything and everything if they can get away with it and - as already stated - have less transparency and less accountability to society. Think of e.g. the Bhopal disaster or Slaughter-House cases.

I don't think we're in disagreement here. But the kind of death and misery that results from corporate misdeeds is miniscule compared to what governments both democratic and authoritarian have inflicted over the same timeframe. I would certainly not argue that we should trust corporations; I think sensible regulation and enforcement of existing laws is a good thing. My objection is to the characterization of Google as "evil" based on suspicions alone. There are legitimate privacy issues involved but in an era where the past two US presidents believe they have the authority to torture and/or assassinate without due process, Saudi Arabia is flogging a man for trivial Facebook comments, China exerts stifling control over all social media and civil society in general, and so on, it's absolutely insane to assert that companies like Google are the real danger to human freedom.

Ultimately, the government is accountable to the people since the people grant the government the power to do what it does. The government thus has an incentive to please the people since those exercising that power usually wish to get re-elected. And if a government does something horrible enough, the people rise up and topple it and replace it.

I'd argue that most of recorded history indicates that citizens are willing to put up with a huge amount of government misbehavior as long as it's not directed towards them personally, and are also far too willing to let bygones be bygones in cases where draconian punishment is called for. The CIA's torture is only the most recent example. Again, we're talking about matters of life and death, which is far beyond the powers of mere corporations.

A corporation on the other hand is only accountable to the shareholders and its ultimate obligation is just to maximize shareholder wealth.

True, but a corporation is also obliged to follow the laws of the countries in which it operates, which includes the pretty much universal understanding that the government has a monopoly on force. The government can also invade my privacy at will, including interfering with my personal contracts with telecoms and Internet companies, but Google cannot simply decide to listen in on my cell phone conversations.

(And I'm not a libertarian, so I have no idea what your screed about libertarians has to do with anything.)

And you'd get no privacy with either, as well. So competition does not make a real difference to you

I hate to parrot the free-market fundamentalists, but seriously: if the privacy you speak of was really that valuable, there would be a market for it, and I could find a competitor who wasn't mining my emails for information. (And there probably is, I'm just too busy to look right now, and frankly I'd rather have the free service.) Or, hell, I could just buy a domain and set up my own email server, or do other fancy shit to hide from the eyes of Google, which is still perfectly legal, unlike (for instance) hiding from the IRS or setting up my own government.

Because in the end, Google gets your information anyways because I'm certain a significant number of people you email use Gmail. And on analysis, that can easily be 50% or more emails now archived by Google about you.

Which still doesn't negate points (2) and (3). What could they possibly do with partial email conversations? I don't put anything important and/or sensitive in email anyway - I mean, that's like the very first thing I learned about email ("don't send anything over email you aren't willing to have your worst enemies read", from my father who barely knows how to use anything beyond a word processor and web browser) and it is good practice regardless of who's running the servers.

And, frankly, while I'm reliant on email (i.e. GMail) for my professional activities, I have zero expectation of privacy there anyway. It would not kill me to do away with personal email altogether - I'd rather not do it, but again it's vastly easier to do than escaping the reach of the US government (or any other). But I find email convenient, and I am happy to trade away some privacy in exchange for the free email account and other nifty services. So Google knows I spend a lot of money on musical equipment, my mom doesn't like the GOP, and I'm incapable of making financial decisions without consulting my dad. So fucking what?

I've thought for a long time that 'big brother' will not come from governments, but from corporations.

A few of the many important differences:

1) Consent. No one is forcing me to use Google products. (Well, except my employer, which contracts with Google for email and various other services, but anything that they have access to is my employer's property anyway and I have no expectation of privacy to begin with.) I could completely banish Google from my personal life without severely impacting anything I do. It's a little more difficult to escape the reach of governments.

2) Competition. Microsoft and Yahoo would be happy to handle my email instead. I can't switch governments without physically moving to another country. (Voting doesn't count, and I don't vote anyway.) Conversely, it would not be a huge burden for me to jettison all Apple or Microsoft products, although it would be problematic for my music collection.

3) Force. Google does not have the ability to dispatch a SWAT team to break down my door, shoot my dog, and haul me out in handcuffs. And why would they, anyway? They don't care what activities I'm engaging in offline except for the purpose of targeting advertisements.

There are certainly all sorts of things that corporations can do to make our lives unpleasant, but it seems rather perverse to worry about creeping corporate dictatorship because of Google's ad targeting, especially given the track record of governments.

I don't want to hold my elected officials accountable for my broadband. They can barely keep the roads paved.

I'm wondering why everyone seems to think so highly of their local officials. What cities have such great local officials that we want to give them all these new responsibilities?

Honest question: Is your local city government efficient, responsible, technically savvy, and trustworthy enough to expect them to do a great job as your ISP? If so, where do you live?

Why is municipal broadband appealing? Is it only better versus Comcast, or is it actually good in some way? Are you expecting to get it for "free" -- a.k.a. paid for by your neighbors?

Where in the US do they have municipal broadband with a long track record of working well, with competitive pricing not subsidized by tax revenue?

Sometimes you can't solve problems. Less government power is the answer to not creating new problems.

When you have a non-government problem, you can often escape it or fix it for yourself or at least mitigate it somewhat. When it's the government causing problems, it's a lot harder to deal with.

This is one reason why some of us want to stop giving the government more power. Because they can never be held accountable when they misuse that power and hurt people. No one in power is ever guilty of anything. Care and recklessness are rewarded equally.

It's easy to say you're for "openness" (and whatever other buzzwords) when you never have to actually live up to any sort of standards. Why should anyone listen or believe or trust? Apparently, we shouldn't.