But the language I quoted from your post above does seem to me to allocate a sort of moral responsibility to Google — and I think it’s rather a question of comparative institutions: Is it the market (here with Google’s facilitation) or the political process that better (more cheaply, more accurately, etc.) serves the social welfare? One way to start to think about that (not the end of the analysis, but the beginning) is to deny equivalence: Google’s “enabling” government to access information as an incidence of its valuable conduct is not (morally/ethically/politically) the same as government’s actually accessing the information. It may be, in the end, that it is more economical for Google to deal with the problem (if it is one) given the political reality. But for the New York Times (and you, as I understood your post) whose language is morality and politics, not economics, to suggest that Google bears responsibility is not, I think, helpful.

I don’t recall arguing in the post that Google should destroy data, and my argument wasn’t primarily to cast blame on Google. I was arguing that when businesses gather information, the government may gather it notwithstanding their privacy policies. This thwarts the interests of companies that want to entice people to reveal information by promising strong limitations in its use. It also adds an often unstated risk to a consumer’s revealing information to a company. My primary message was that Google should be pushing for legislation to better regulate government information gathering from businesses. In other words, I was saying that it is here where business interests and individual consumer interests are aligned with regard to privacy. As I wrote at the conclusion of the post:

I also think that businesses should use their power to push for greater legislative protections of personal information from government access. It is here were Google’s interests and the privacy interests of its users coincide. Right now, the government is inadequately regulated when it comes to accessing personal data maintained by third parties. If the businesses maintaining the data lobbied Congress for greater protections, this would help to address one of the major privacy threats that their maintaining the information poses. It wouldn’t solve all of the problems, but it would address a big one.