Fair point and well preempted. Proprietary software can offer some freedom but it does not ensure it will remain, nor does it offer the full 4 freedoms required.<p>What you say is not technically incorrect, but practically Google, Apple &amp; Microsoft were all secretly in NSA&#x27;s PRISM. A large corporate entity is subject to state pressure in a different way than a public good. A corporation must profit, new markets must be entered, their regimes placated at the expense of users. Ownership is a single point of failure.<p>A proper security audit is only possible if one can compile that source with ones own toolchain or get the binary from a source you trust. One must test and make modifications, otherwise the binary only purports to be from exactly that source.<p>So you must in the end trust the companies, and trust them to release patches promptly, not delay them at the behest of the NSA (as per Snowden).<p>PGP and SSH are both provably secure. Security is dynamic, FOSS is faster at releasing patches and not removing features while updating security.<p>If a patch removes an essential feature and security is bundled with it, this is problematic. If you cannot use distributed community modifications then you are often out of luck.<p>Companies change hands, policies change, you may be secure today but they sell your data tomorrow. Free software forks at disagreements so everyone is happy. Free software cannot be taken from you by law - it is public domain.