&gt; Except they seem pretty seize-happy and the only thing protecting your house is the say-so of a judge.<p>You&#x27;re being obtuse.  Even if every judge rolls over, if you have to seize multiple email servers in multiple jurisdictions, the paperwork represents expense and time that law enforcement <i>simply will not do</i> unless they have a really strong reason.  &quot;People are lazy&quot; is the universal constant.  We fear computerization of things precisely because computers <i>aren&#x27;t</i> lazy.<p>&gt; That seems quite unfair, as at least 2 have been very public about their expenditures to try and make such attacks impossible in the future, and have vocally fought subpoenas.<p>That&#x27;s what they say publicly.  However, if they roll over for governments like China, they&#x27;re going to roll over for the US who can genuinely affect their revenue stream.<p>&gt; The lawsuit should I discover it would probably make me richer and more famous than all the buyout events I&#x27;ve experienced.<p>Your naivete is touching.  Google wouldn&#x27;t do anything actionable.  They scan your email store and know <i>not to invest</i>.  You&#x27;ll never prove anything for a passive non-action like this.<p>Even for positive action failures, it&#x27;s very difficult to prove.  This is the whole point of &quot;parallel construction&quot;.  You dragnet to find something incriminating, and then build the legal path to what you now know to search for.