In December 2013, as tech leaders met at the White House to urge President Obama to reform government surveillance practices, the conversation at one point changed course. The president paused and offered a prediction. “I have a suspicion that the guns will turn,” he said, suggesting that many of the companies represented at the table held more personal data than any government on the planet. The time would come, he said, when the demands that we were making on the government would be made on the tech sector itself.
